


Blood Kin

by NanDibble



Series: The Blood Series [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Original Character(s), Season/Series 07, Tattoos, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-07-01
Updated: 2003-07-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 11:57:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 139,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9180505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NanDibble/pseuds/NanDibble
Summary: Roving Turok-han are decimating Sunnydale’s vamps. Willing to fight but needing a leader, the vamps fix on an unwilling Spike, who summons Angel—who’s in a position to take over everything Spike cares about—to form a fighting partnership between Sunnydale’s vampires and Buffy and the SITs. Also Dawn returns to her Key state and Spike attempts to recover her.Sequel toOld Blood





	1. Section 1: Stirrings — Grenades and Stakes

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Effulgent Spike (and Buffy, and Dawn, and everybody) belongs to Mutant Enemy and Joss Whedon, to whom be all praise. No infringement nor profit intended, only more SpikeJoy for everyone.

Drawing two cards gave Spike two pair, nines over fives. Interesting hand: not too big or too small, and the draw already past, so no more improvement: whatever you had, you had. Judiciously he raised a finger just enough to direct his minion, who’d accepted the name of Gonzo the Great, to stay with the hand until/unless Spike signaled otherwise.  
  
Since the other players in the back room of Willy’s didn’t know Gonzo was Spike’s minion, Spike had a considerable advantage quite apart from the usual varieties of cheating they all practiced, except that Spike was better at them.  
  
And if the game ended in a fight, that was no bad thing either. Just one of the small pleasures that kept life on the Hellmouth interesting and the reputation of Willy’s as a down-and-dirty dangerous demon bar intact.  
  
Clem, who’d opened, bet a cautious suckling grey tiger-striped kitten. Clem obviously had a pair and was now worried it wasn’t high enough. As a guess, jacks, with maybe an ace as a kicker.  
  
The Vrahall demon, whose name was apparently Hrish-huugh-att, raised a weaned butterscotch. Just to confuse things, Spike asked if that was the same as marmalade, a really appetizing color, or just plain yellow. After some argument, the consensus came down on yellow, which of course was ridiculous, it was the same color, only different words. So Spike raised by coat color of marmalade, getting a little edge without actually having to throw more into the pot.  
  
Everybody else at the table of course was an idiot with the possible exception of a vamp named Mike (in sullen game face), whom Spike didn’t know, and Clem, of course, who wasn’t exactly dim but such a fucking warm-hearted wanker that there was no practical difference. So the fun, for Spike, was finding out how blatantly he could cheat without somebody catching him at it.  
  
When Mike called, the bet was to Gonzo, who also called. That brought the bet back to Clem, who frowned and sorted his cards (moving two) in a really embarrassing manner. Bugger: the bat-eared skinbag had trip something, which let Spike out of it right there, unless he wanted to see if he could bluff Clem out. That possibility died with a thud when Clem raised to a bluepoint Burmese, weaned. Lovely little things, although you’d be picking fur out of your teeth for days.  
  
Spike confessed that was too rich for his blood and folded. Mike called. Gonzo called. Clem showed trip threes. Mike had two pair, aces and nines. Gonzo spread out a full house, fours over Jacks. Spike stared at the hand, at the clueless minion, then back at the hand again.  
  
Then he ostentatiously checked the wall clock, since no demon would be caught with such a nancified ornament as a wristwatch, and said, “That’s it for me. Gotta go on shift.”  
  
As Spike pushed away from the table, Gonzo offered, “I’ll do the tally,” as well he might, since that would keep him at the table awhile longer. Figuring out who owed who what fractions of kittens sometimes took awhile.  
  
“Sooner Clem did it, but it’s strangers’ choice,” Spike commented, glancing to vampire Mike and the Vrahall. Hrish-huugh-att pointed at Clem, and Mike muttered, “Fine with me. Whatever.” Spike nodded. “Clem, then. Gonzo, you s’pose you could help me unload today’s delivery?”  
  
Looking unhappier by the minute but with no good way to dodge out of it, Gonzo trailed Spike into the store room.  
  
Spike wheeled and shut the door, then rounded on Gonzo in game face. “You incredible idiot, you sat there holding a full house _and you didn’t raise?”_  
  
Already backing off, not that it was going to do him any good, Gonzo protested, “You said, ‘Keep it going,’ boss. ‘Keep it going,’ you said, and I did that. Did just like you said. And what are you pissed about? We won the hand, didn’t we?”  
  
Advancing as Gonzo retreated, Spike responded, “There is no ‘we’ here. There’s me and a moron minion without the brains of an unripe cantaloupe. Total waste of the space. That hand was worth a couple of Siamese, at least. And you let it stay at a goddamned bluepoint Burmese. Amazed you didn’t fold on four aces. Won the hand? _Won the fucking hand?”_  
  
A commotion started up out in the bar. Spike ignored it.  
  
Gonzo pointed at the wall, anxious to direct Spike’s attention someplace else. “Biter. They’re yelling _Biter_ , boss.”  
  
And so they were. Spike tipped his head, deciding where he most wanted to direct his seething anger: at Gonzo, or a Turok-han. “All right, get the kegs in the racks and the bottles in the cooler. And you better have it done before I get back.”  
  
“Sure, boss!”  
  
Spike shoved up the accordion door of the loading bay and jumped down to ground level. Cruising Turok-han, that the local demons called “Biters,” not having a clue about the history or proper nomenclature of Sunnyhell’s newest demon contingent, had become a nightly occurrence. As Spike’s job at Willy’s combined bartender and bouncer, it was his responsibility to see that none actually got inside or ate actual customers. Mostly he did it by luring the Turok-han off, since the snaggle-toothed Uber-vamps hated their mixed-blood distant descendents and were almost always willing to turn aside and pursue. Biters were bigger and stronger, but Spike was faster and knew Sunnydale’s alleys and roofs and interlaced sewer lines intimately. It wasn’t any problem to lure the Biter a few streets away, then ditch him with a quick leap to a roof or down a sewer.  
  
Spike generally didn’t consider the Uber-vamps worth fighting. Taking out one or two, here and there, had no significant impact on their total numbers, and the chance of sustaining serious damage in such a fight was a near certainty.  
  
Having just had a demonstration of winning that was worse than losing should rationally have made Spike even more cautious. It had the opposite effect. He was annoyed and wanted to kill something, and the Turok-han had presented itself at the opportune moment. Gonzo would still be available afterward, if Spike wanted to visit on him the just wrath of a Master Vampire whose plans had been royally fucked up by an idiot minion.  
  
As he came around the corner of the building, he pulled from his back pocket the wooden-handled piano wire garrote he now always kept on him. Grey-skinned, ropy limbed, shark-mouthed and a bony seven or eight feet high, two Biters had a human backed up against a loudly protesting blue Ford Pinto in the front parking lot and were apparently bickering over who got first crack at the snack. Eating a human, solo, would keep an ordinary vamp going for several days; the Biters apparently needed one apiece, every night, and had begun to make a serious dent in Sunnydale’s remaining population.  
  
What they were feeding on, down in the nearby Hellmouth, Spike neither knew nor cared. But every night, a couple of dozen Biters emerged from the basement entrances of the High School and scattered in various directions to forage. To hunt. Since Willy’s was only two blocks from Sunnydale High, some inevitably passed by, going or returning.  
  
So far, none had actually invaded the demon bar. Willy, who was human, had promised Spike a bounty to make sure none ever did.  
  
From maybe twenty paces away, Spike yelled, “Oi, grey and ugly. You’re trespassing. This is claimed territory. Get the hell out!”  
  
One Biter looked around at him, which meant the other one started chowing down on the human, about as Spike had expected. The first one started clicking: not a demon language Spike knew, though near enough to Thresin that he could sometimes catch a word or two. Mostly cursing, no surprise there. Thres demons didn’t go in for polite chat, at least the ones he’d run into, so those were mostly the words he knew.  
  
_Feeble scum_ didn’t come out as much of an insult in English, but it probably was pretty scathing in Biter.  
  
“You deaf as well as ugly? Go and hunt the hell someplace else!”  
  
The first Biter came at him then: big bounding strides that closed the distance in notime flat. Spike had dodged, of course--in among the cars. When the Biter changed direction, Spike jumped up on the hood of a green Nissan, denting the metal heavily, the cheap way cars were made nowadays, then jumped to the roof of a red Mitsubishi coupe as the Biter took a swipe at where he’d been. Naturally those two car alarms went off, too, adding to the din.  
  
His last jump had put him at a good angle to slip the garrote crosshanded over the Biter’s head, set his shoulders, and yank hard. The piano wire cut through the neck and spinal column, a neat beheading. The Biter dusted in an explosion of grey, noxious ash.  
  
Spike turned, not quite quickly enough: having finished its meal, the other Biter had reached the Mitsubishi and took a huge clawed swipe across Spike’s legs. Spike went sideways. He hit the blacktop in a roll, but the Biter only needed to turn to reach him and he was hit again across the left shoulder, the claws digging in and holding him in place, pretty much immobilizing that arm. He grabbed the Biter’s forearm long enough to whip both boots up into a head kick that freed him from the claws and threw him and the Biter apart. Spike was on his feet, looking for the nearest place to get high and into good garroting position when he saw something like a black rubber ball come bouncing under the Biter’s feet and flung himself away in a full-out dive under the nearest vehicle, a Dodge 4x4. He rolled under the truck and out the other side, then tucked, arms over his head, as the incendiary grenade went off, turning the Biter into a pillar of flame that screeched and wobbled a second, then flared into a fireball as its fuel diffused into dust.  
  
The Nissan caught, and there was a good chance the Mitsubishi would go too. Spike uncurled and put some distance between him and the burning vehicles, holding his injured shoulder.  
  
The bar’s customers, of various demon races, were coming out to watch, now that the fight was over. But one vamp was standing in the open, still bent into the underhand throwing pose from pitching the grenade. Mike, from the poker game. He and Spike traded wary, carefully neutral glances as Spike passed by to begin his shift at the bar.  
  
Spike liked it that the patrons cleared away and left him a path without his having to shove his way through. His reputation in Sunnydale had been lower than dirt for a long time. Chipped vampire, helpless against humans, who ran at the Slayer’s heels and slaughtered his own because he couldn’t go after his proper prey. It’d taken him several weeks at Willy’s, taking on all comers, to turn that around. The furniture and fixtures had suffered in the process, but the predictable fights had provided Willy’s with a thriving customer base, demon and human, wanting to watch and wager on the results.  
  
As Spike took his place behind the bar, he noticed with satisfaction that Willy was on the stepstool wiping at the chalk board and then changing the odds to 3 to 1 (demon). Spike’s odds against humans were 30 to 1 and not apt to go any higher.  
  
The chip had been neutralized.  
  
Spike slopped some vodka on a bar rag and roughly wiped down the gashes, going to game face not because of pain but to stop the bleeding faster, then paid the injuries no further attention, staying even with current orders as the patrons started returning. Apparently the Mitsubishi had caught, and there were some odds being called on the likelihood of the next vehicle over joining the conflagration.  
  
The job at Willy’s had initially been to settle a debt Spike owed for trashing the place. It continued because Spike found it convenient in a number of ways. His shift didn’t begin till midnight, so it didn’t interfere with the occasional kitten poker game or the nightly patrol he did with the Slayers-in-Training, the Potentials. It was only four days a week, which left three for other important nighttime activities, like shagging the Slayer whenever she passed him a certain look or started brushing against him on patrol.  
  
Willy’s always had been a good place to fish for information, find out what was doing among Sunnydale’s large demon contingent drawn to the Hellmouth’s disruptive energies. Sunnydale had long been a popular vacation and tourist spot for demons of all sorts. The Vrahall demon had been wearing one of the souvenir T-shirts that read _I visited the Hellmouth and it_ (picture of large red lips, fangs) _me._  
  
In addition to information, Spike’s job brought in cash: always in short supply when feeding, clothing, and housing about 30 people, most of them ravenous teenagers. And expenses had inevitably gone up now that they were maintaining two households, the Summers place on Revello and the new place where Spike and about half of the SITs were camped out, on Brown, the next street over.  
  
The Slayer’s “student advisor” job at the High School brought in some. Not much, but at least even with her take-home from that disgusting pit, the Doublemeat Palace, so she’d been able to quit there, to Spike’s great relief. Demon girl, Anya, of course, had the Magic Box, but didn’t chip in on any sort of regular basis, as Spike understood things. Giles, the ex-Watcher, paid for his globe-hopping trips to collect newly-found Potentials out of his own savings, gone more often than present, so he didn’t chip in much beyond that. Harris donated some from his job in construction, and so did the witch, Willow, in the form of rent at Casa Summers. The frequent hospital bills were paid by installments with whatever was left over.  
  
With the basics mostly taken care of, whatever Spike brought in went toward necessities like the cable bill, video rental, and outings to the mall. And the minions, of course.  
  
Having heard a call for beer, Spike set the glass down and was a minute recognizing Mike, the incendiary grenade guy. It was the first time Spike had seen him out of game face. Mike looked at him long enough to either be a muted challenge, or else the bloke wanted something. Either way, Spike didn’t care, and turned away to catch the next order. It did nothing for the vamp’s likability that his human face vaguely reminded Spike of Riley Finn, one of the Slayer’s numerous exes, all of whom Spike hated when he bothered thinking about such things.  
  
The clanks of successive sets of metal window shutters closing announced 4 a.m. Spike served the last round, then went to the storeroom. All the kegs and bottles had been put away, but Gonzo had decamped, no surprise. Spike glowered and tried to make a mental note to settle up with the idiot some other time, even though he knew he’d most likely forget. Too much going on to enforce proper discipline on the minions, of which he now had three: Gonzo, Huey, and Dewey. There’d been Louie, but a Biter had driven him off a kill and then had him for dessert about a week ago.  
  
The Turok-han were becoming more and more of a problem. Spike hoped that whenever, as predicted, they came spilling out of the Hellmouth full force, he’d have the children, the SITs, something like ready to meet them. Outnumbered, as predicted, about a thousand to one. But you could only do what you could do.  
  
There was the totally unknown power and reliability of the witch’s magic to be factored in, assorted prophecies that might apply or not, and the occasional rumored magical weapon to be located and secured. All impossible to calculate in terms of their effect in evening the odds. Nothing to be done but do the best he could with the parts that made sense. He tried not to think about the other parts any more than he could help.  
  
Willy was locking the chain-link inner gate behind the last of the departing patrons. Spike didn’t bother asking him for the Biter bounty but took it, and his nights wages, directly out of the till. It was simpler that way, and since Spike was continually handling cash, Willy didn’t have much option but to trust his part-time bartender/bouncer not to steal him blind. Spike mostly contented himself with nicking cigarettes and the odd bottle, which wasn’t much of a dent, considering.  
  
“Night, Spike,” Willy called, heading out the back. “See to the padlock?”  
  
“Right you are.”  
  
The gashes had all stopped bleeding some time ago and the shoulder was only faintly lame. But he knew he’d catch hell if he showed up in slashed clothing. All sorts of needless fussing and explanations required by his birds, either set, depending on where he showed up for breakfast. So he changed into one of the spare sets of identical black jeans and T-shirts he kept in back, then let himself out the rear door.  
  
He was shutting the padlock when he felt himself being watched.  
  
That vamp Mike--a decent distance away, just standing there, not like he figured to jump Spike for the bounty money. Had some of his own coming too, but it wasn’t Spike’s business to tell him that.  
  
“You want something?” Spike asked evenly.  
  
“Talk to you a minute?”  
  
“About what? Sun’s coming.”  
  
Mike hitched a shoulder. “Not for awhile yet.” Then he held up a bottle which, by shape and color, wasn’t anything Willy carried. Been down to the store by the mall and then back. Odd.  
  
Spike settled a hip on the edge of the loading bay and lit a cigarette. Thus invited, Mike took a seat in barely-reaching distance at the far side of the ledge and leaned to hand the bottle over. Hadn’t been opened.  
  
Polite bastard. Not a fledge, either: put and shed game face at will. Knew when the sun was due without glancing at the stars.  
  
Spike had enough of a drink, then returned the bottle and waited to find out what all this was in aid of.  
  
“Payin’ my respects,” said Mike. “Master Vamp of Sunnydale. Order of Aurelius, I hear.”  
  
He offered the bottle again, but Spike waved it off, still waiting.  
  
“I was turned here,” Mike continued. “Passing through. About six years ago.”  
  
“I don’t give a goddam about your fucking history, mate. You--“  
  
Mike was impolite enough to interrupt. “I’m an Aurelian. But not one of yours.”  
  
Spike stared at him a good long while. “And I should care because…?”  
  
“Because I knew enough to get away and stay away while you were slaughtering all of your get, a couple of months back,” replied Mike bluntly. “I didn’t want to get caught in a mistake.”  
  
Spike considered. There were several of his bloodline that might have turned this vamp. All of them had been in Sunnydale around that time, in and out. The Master himself, head of the bloodline, finally done in by the Slayer. Then his own immediate clan: Darla, Angelus, and Drusilla. They’d all been here around that time: Darla toadying to the Master, Angel drifting in, in the Slayer’s wake, then he and Dru together after Prague.  
  
“Not that I really care, but whose get are you then?”  
  
“Angelus. Pieced it together afterward. Turned me and left me.”  
  
Spike felt his face tighten at the mention of his Sire’s name. “Possible, not proven. And if it’s some big family inheritance you’re after, you’re shit out of luck. First thing, there isn’t any, not that I know of. Second, without acknowledgement, you’re an ex-dinner that got interrupted, went sideways. Don’t expect Angel to care. Nor me neither.”  
  
“I know that. I just want a fair hearing. Whatever you figure to do about the Turok-han, I want in.”  
  
“Now, that’s interesting,” Spike said in a lazy, totally uninterested voice. He decided to accept the bottle when it was offered again. “Want to play some more with your grenades, do you?”  
  
“Nobody’s doing anything. Can’t make a kill anymore without one of those fucking monsters taking it away from you and taking you, besides, if you don’t back off quick enough. Hunting territories are already all messed up, border raids and fights every night now. Whole place is coming unglued. Give ‘em time, they’re going to overrun the whole town. And nobody’s doing anything.”  
  
Spike set the bottle on his knee. “Go someplace else, then. What’s holding you here?”  
  
“I don’t run. OK, from you on your own ground, all right, I backed off. Not challenging you here. But I don’t run from a thing like that. I’m ex-merc. I been talking to the cousins, around town. Don’t have to go up against those fuckers with a piece of twine, not if there was a supply of bug-burners you could draw on.”  
  
“What is it that you want, Michael?”  
  
“I told you: I want in.”  
  
Spike smiled at the sky. “You be in, then, if you want. Whatever the hell you think ‘in’ means.”  
  
“If you don’t control the Hellmouth, you don’t control the town. Are you gonna let yourself be driven off the Hellmouth?”  
  
“Well, I don’t hardly have it now, do I? No, you go play soldiers if that’s what you want.” He finished the cigarette and pitched it, then passed the bottle back.  
  
Taking it, the other vampire looked up in game face, golden eyes shining. “I can’t. They won’t follow me. The cousins. I know I got no claim, but I’m an Aurelian all the same, the same as you. But they won’t follow me. They’d follow you.”  
  
“Michael, have you ever been a minion?”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Have you ever tried getting much of anything done with minions?”  
  
“No,” Mike admitted, less vehemently, letting his face relax into human contours.  
  
“Then let me educate you, Michael. Trying to organize demons to do anything whatever has a lot in common with herding cats. Just take us two, now. I can’t trust you, and you better know you can’t trust me. The second I think it’s to my advantage to take your head off, I’ll do it. Or even if you do no more than seriously piss me off. And the second you figure you don’t need me to be this fine figurehead or whatever you got in mind, you’ll do me quick as blinking. Now multiply that by fifty. You seem like a bright enough lad: you do the math.”  
  
Mike argued stubbornly, “I been a merc. Nearly ten years. It doesn’t have to be that way. I know the rules.”  
  
“No, your demon is six years old, it was never a merc, it’s only a demon. Maybe you can set it aside a little easier than most because of how you were turned. But you’re not the person who was a merc, that person is dead, Michael. And all the demon wants is a good feed, and a good shag, and shelter from the sun, I got mine, Jack, and the hell with the cousins. Demons love chaos, Michael. They love to bust things up. And the more you try to set ‘em up like dominos, the harder they’ll knock those dominos down and you for afters. Anybody who believes otherwise is a fool. Now you go your ways, I got nothing against you. You came polite and--” Spike stopped, overtaken by a thought. “Any chance you could get your hands on two, three dozen tasers?”  
  
Mike raised his head. He and Spike looked at each other a long moment.  
  
“Might be. I’ll let you know.”  
  
Conspicuously leaving the bottle behind, Mike slid off the edge of the dock and began walking away. Spike called after him, “You’re due $ 100 bounty for doing that Biter. You might want to ask Willy about that sometime.”  
  
“You keep it. I’m not after your job.”  
  
“Good to know that,” commented Spike peaceably. Well, that had been one of the possibilities that’d occurred to him. And he didn’t altogether discard it. Spike was inclined to believe Angelus had turned the boy: something about his bullheaded impatience, his refusal to consider alternatives, made a pretty good match for his Sire’s ways, subtracting about 200 years of experience in cold-blooded bullying. The lad was just starting out, after all. Orphaned, so to say: never been a minion or a childe or a sire.  
  
He’d learn. Or else he’d die. It was nothing to Spike, either way.  
  
Absently he collected the bottle in passing. No point wasting it.  
  
**********  
  
The house on Brown Street was a modest ranch with white aluminum siding and a brick-colored roof, in decent condition. Although a FOR SALE sign decorated the front lawn, in almost five weeks no one had come to show or to see the property. Sunnydale’s housing market had disappeared off the bottom of the graph and realtors had been among the first to leave town. It had taken Spike no more than an hour’s meandering to choose this one among five vacant on Revello and Brown. The back yards of the two properties abutted, so there was constant traffic back and forth. And the previous owners had abandoned the place in such haste that the utilities hadn’t been cut off. A definite advantage.  
  
They had a pretty comfortable set-up, Spike and his pack of fourteen Slayers-in-Training. There were no stupid rules against smoking in the house, meals were served on a set schedule (cooked according to a written rotation), and most of the day was blocked out for different kinds of training and practice. Not much active supervision to be done. Place pretty much ran itself. Spike usually watched morning weapons practice from the shaded side porch, then called a couple or three pairs for drilling or instruction down in the basement until noontime. Then he had the basement to himself all afternoon, to sleep until sundown and then preparations for the night’s patrol, either on their own or in combination with the Slayer’s pack, after the children had all had their suppers.  
  
When Spike arrived, still short of sunrise that Saturday morning, the children were already out in the yard doing their morning jerks, waving and calling to him as he passed. In the kitchen he found Amanda and Kim finishing slices of toast dripping with jam, and Willow yawning over a cup of herbal tea with a surprisingly pleasant smell.  
  
Pouring a cup of pigs’ blood for himself, Spike greeted Willow and she sat abruptly straighter, blinking hard to wake herself up.  
  
“I am so not a morning person!” Willow announced.  
  
Spike added crumbled cereal and a good shot of hot sauce to the blood, then put the cup in the microwave and set it going. Putting Mike’s bottle of Scotch into the top of a cabinet, Spike responded, “Then why are you up?”  
  
“Wanted to tell you…. Wanted to tell you…. Oh! I’ve done a dump and set a dampening field on the basement. Our basement. Maybe you could see, later, if the all-radioactive-dangerous-itchy-magic vibes are down to tolerable levels yet. Doesn’t feel like anything to me, but” (she shrugged expressively) “that’s _me_ , you know?” Then she smiled brightly. “You get to be the canary in the coal mine!”  
  
Collecting his mug from the microwave, Spike gave her a look expressive of all his enthusiasm for the prospect.  
  
“There are crystals,” Willow mentioned, as though that should be considered a special inducement. “At the cardinal points and one in the middle, just in case.”  
  
As Amanda and Kim, who’d stayed politely quiet while the grown-ups were talking, said, “Bye, Spike,” and “We’re gone, Spike,” before joining the group in the yard, Spike turned sunwise and tried to locate the fuming blowhole of residual blood magic that had been erupting in the Summers’ basement for the past five weeks: the reason Spike had been forced to vacate. “It’s better,” he admitted. “Can’t feel it from here anymore, at least. All right, I’ll look in before patrol. Red, anything desperate on the want list you know about?” When Willow shook her head wordlessly, Spike went on, “Gonna hang onto my pay a bit, see if something comes up. If it does, I’ll need it to hand. So take it into account, if there’s need, but I’m not throwin’ it into the pot just yet, all right?”  
  
“All right.” Willow had become the de facto treasurer, in part because nobody quite trusted Anya to keep good account of which funds had come from where. Anya was a little bit _too_ good with money for anybody, Spike included, to be comfortable entrusting her with theirs. As with a shark, what went in bore little resemblance to what came out.  
  
Spike kept still about the Biter bounty, in part because that was “found” money and therefore not yet committed to anything. The other reason was that admitting it would have meant explaining why he’d taken on a pair of Turok-han single-handed, something that would definitely have put the Slayer’s back up, both because of the risk and because it’d taken her four separate tries to bring one down. Spike didn’t want her to feel she was in a competition about such a thing.  
  
No need to make a problem when there wasn’t one.  
  
“Rupert still here?” Spike asked idly.  
  
“Yes, do you think he’s finally found them all? No new Potentials located in, what--six, seven weeks?”  
  
“About that. He still stayin’ at that motel?”  
  
“Ahuh, the last that he said.”  
  
“Right. Well, dawdle over your tea as long as you please, pet. My time to watch the children try to murder each other with sharp objects.” Trading a smile with the witch, Spike went out onto the side porch and settled on the steps.  
  
His presence was the signal for the two leaders, Kim and Amanda, to call the pack from their warm-up exercises and start weapons drill. It was hard to get good edge weapons these days, but Willow had found an internet source of hand-forged daggers and short swords, good replicas intended for the Society for Creative Anachronism and RenFaire crowds. Made for use, not just show. There were now nearly enough for everyone to have one.  
  
Bloody antiques, but effective enough, he supposed. Not so much against vampires, but good for whittling down the larger non-humanoid demons that showed up from time to time. Good also against Harbingers, agents and minions of their ultimate opponent, the First Evil. Cut them up right nice. But Spike was increasingly taken by the effectiveness of tasers, which could take down anything on two legs and even some creatures with more than two, and which doubled the effectiveness of any other weapon by disabling the target almost immediately.  
  
Like almost everything else about Slayers, choice of weapons was hobbled into near paralysis by tradition. Dead stop in the Middle Ages. Correction: dead stop with the Greek phalanx, because they had yet to adopt anything resembling effective armor. Figured Slayers were as disposable as so many test dummies, kill one and another pops right up someplace, so why bother protecting them? Stick a weapon in her hand and send her out to be slaughtered, was pretty much the drill.  
  
Spike had never had any fondness for the Council of Watchers and had shed no tears over hearing that their headquarters, and nearly all senior members, had been blown into small particles. But once he’d really started thinking about permissible weaponry, and about sending his children into the field against Turok-han, Spike’s contempt for the council’s notions of acceptable risk had made him wish he’d blown the place up himself.  
  
If that Mike, now, could come up with a source of affordable tasers, Spike would get them even if it meant he had to arm-wrestle Rupert Giles under a table to do it. Ex-Watcher though he was, Rupert had barely been dragged, kicking and protesting and wiping his wanker glasses, into the computer age. As bad as the rest of them. The idea of arming Potentials with tasers would about send him right round the bend. Should be on the receiving end a few times, as Spike had: then see how he felt about it.  
  
And all the while he’d been considering this, his hands had taken up their usual occupation: turning foot-long dowel sticks into stakes with a large, sharp knife. He studied the one he was working on quizzically: when all else fails, stab it with a pointy stick. The cheapest ammunition. Cheap, almost, as the generations of Slayers who’d wielded them.  
  
His Slayer, now--she wasn’t expendable. Nor the SITs, his pack. Or hers, come to that. Their purpose was to fight; Spike’s purpose was to keep them all alive. While rendering as many of the opposition as messily, thoroughly dead as possible, of course.  
  
That incendiary grenade, that had made quite a pretty show. He wondered what they cost by the dozen, or the gross.  
  
Since it wasn’t a schoolday, the usual activity brought the usual company: Dawn, the Slayer’s kid sister, plunking down on the steps and collecting a dowel from the basket, producing her own large, sharp knife to whittle the point.  
  
“Mornin’, Bit.”  
  
“Hi, Spike. What’s the news from the Hellmouth?”  
  
“Just more of the usual. What cheer from Casa Summers?”  
  
“Xander’s free next Thursday, if you still want to get your bike back.” She tilted her head and repeated _bike back_ , enjoying the sound of the words.  
  
“’M still thinking about that,” Spike responded, and Dawn made a cheerful lips-zipping gesture, meaning that she’d let Spike bring the matter up with Harris himself without coaching from the sidelines. Spike gave her a look, so she zipped her lips again. “You just can’t wait to ride pillion,” Spike charged.  
  
“I already have the helmet,” she countered. “And never mind me: think Slayer hanging onto your middle, little terrified screams in your ear, leaning into the turns--“  
  
“Mind what you’re doing, Bit,” Spike interrupted mildly. “Don’t get all daydreamy with a knife in your hands, cut yourself, certain sure.”  
  
“Not _my_ fingers in danger,” Dawn declared airily, and Spike had to laugh.  
  
“And that could be, too. I’ll think about it.”  
  
“Why do I have no trouble believing that?” From there to Slayer was no jump at all, and Dawn exclaimed, “Oh, I’m so uber-glad you made it up and got back together again!”  
  
Spike finished one stake, laid it aside, and collected another dowel. “Fairly pleased about it myself, if you must know.”  
  
“Blackmaily material for absolute centuries!” Dawn exulted, waving her knife about in a fairly horrifying manner. Like an orchestra conductor. Then she stopped and gave him a sly, water-testing sideways look that put him on his guard much more than the knife had. “Spike, can I ask you something?’  
  
“Depends on the something, pet.”  
  
“And you won’t kill me or get mad or anything.”  
  
“Now how can I promise a thing like that when you haven’t yet asked me, love? Might need you drawn and quartered, now--“  
  
“Don’t be stupid, Spike. I truly want to know.” When Spike just kept on looking at her, she burst out, “Why doesn’t Buffy love you the way I do?”  
  
Spike laughed and relaxed, again attending to the stake. “I expect that has a lot to do with you’re sixteen and a half, and she’s…what, now: twenty-one? Different things get important with a few more years, love. You’ll find out.”  
  
Dawn shook her head. “No, I know all about that, sex and all--”  
  
“Oh, you do, do you? And how--”  
  
“Please, don’t be dumb. All right, I _don’t_ know. Ms. Ex-green Ball of Mystical Energy here, all produced by squick-free magic, no birds, no bees. That’s not the point. What I mean is what I _do_ know. Anytime you get hurt, it’s like I can’t breathe, it’s not even that I’m scared you’re gonna actually _die_ or anything, I know you came through everything else, you’ll come through this, but it doesn’t _matter_ , I’m all twisted up inside. And Buffy’s calmly checking off how long you’ll be out and how to cover for you and who’s gonna take the patrol or should she cancel it. I _see_ that, Spike. I _know_ that. But I don’t understand how she can be like that. Ever. But specially when you’re hurt.”  
  
“Well, she’s the Slayer, pet. That’s what she’s for. That’s what comes first. Now if I’d taken a fancy to a…painter, say. Or a musician. Or even a writer, maybe. Then that would be what came first.”  
  
“People come first, Spike,” said Dawn, very seriously. So Spike felt he had to take it very seriously too.  
  
“No, they don’t, pet. It’s priorities. Now look here.” He set out four dowels, side by side, and set another set of four underneath that. “Now, that top row, that’s the Slayer’s priorities. And the first one is always the mission. That’s why she’s the Slayer at all: that’s what she’s _for_. An’ that next one, that’s her-for-the-mission: what she’s got to be, and do, as the Slayer. That’s second. And third, maybe that’s me. And that’s a fine place to be. An’ that last one, that’s her-for-herself. She comes last in her own priorities. Which is why you and I nag her to eat, and get enough sleep, and care for herself and all, because she forgets without us reminding. Because that’s last priority, for her. Everything else goes before that.”  
  
“And what’s the second line?”  
  
“Why, that’s me, pet. And my first thing, that’s the Slayer. Her-for-the-mission. To watch her back and do what’s needful to keep her safe. And you know that’s what I’m _for_ , don’t you.”  
  
“Heard you say so. Not sure I agree with it.”  
  
“Well, you don’t have to, pet. These are my priorities, not yours. You got yourself a whole different set, because you look at everything from your own angle. Then second, for me, is Buffy herself. Everything that’s not Slayer. Third is the mission, because she mostly takes care of that, I just go along as best I can. And last here, that’s me-for-myself. Or no: that’s you, Bit. Have to get another stick, to be me.”  
  
As he did so, Dawn sulked, “I thought you were gonna leave me out.”  
  
“No, you didn’t. Now I got more sticks than she does, an’ that’s not right.” He set out a fifth stick for Buffy’s line as well. “Can’t say how she sorts those last two, you’d have to ask her. But I figure the fourth one’s you, and that last one, that’s her-for-herself. Don’t never not take you into account, Bit. Neither her nor me.”  
  
Dawn took four sticks and thumped them down, side by side, on the porch. Then she considered and put two back. She pointed to one of the two that remained. “That’s you.” She pointed to the other. “That’s Buffy.” Then she looked up at him--somewhere between appeal and challenge.  
  
“Where’s you, love?”  
  
Dawn just stared at him. Wide unfathomable eyes the color of sky.  
  
Spike picked up all the sticks and returned them to the basket. “Might be sometime,” he said softly, “you’ll come to love somebody who’s a part of something. Then you’ll know third is a fine place to be. Can’t always expect to be first, every time, Bit. Doesn’t work that way, except maybe for children. Wouldn’t know about that, myself…. It’s fine. Truly. It’s enough. Someday, maybe you’ll find that out for yourself. Till then, you have to take my word. Or not.”  
  
“Not,” she said. “Maybe. I don’t think it’s just priorities.”  
  
“What do you make of it then, pet?”  
  
Dawn looked unhappy. Then she zipped her lips. And since she refused to explain, Spike let it go and they talked of other things.


	2. Section 1: Stirrings — Dreams and Portents

Waking in his fine new brass bed, Spike just laid there, feeling utterly flattened. After awhile he rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes, murmuring, “Ah, Dru, what’ve you done to me, pet?”  
  
Intense, convincing prophetic dreams had been Drusilla’s curse/gift. Mostly hers had come to her awake, but no matter--Spike had no doubt about the resemblance and very little about the source.  
  
He didn’t know whether to attribute his new susceptibility to such dreams to his recently reacquired soul or to the fact that for several months after winning it, he’d been as bug-shagging crazy as Dru had ever been, though he’d mostly got over that now.  
  
More likely it derived from something older, deeper, and darker: his first dream of that kind had brought him the devastating revelation that he was in love with the Slayer. And that was so long ago he couldn’t properly remember.  
  
But the dream itself--that, he remembered just fine.  
  
And the soul could be no explanation for that, unless cause and effect had taken to playing leapfrog.  
  
There’d been others, since, each telling him something he most sincerely didn’t want to know. And so far as he knew, every one of them true.  
  
He finally sat up and shoved his hands through his hair a few times, trying to get himself collected. Time for patrol soon: he should get moving.  
  
He sometimes wondered precisely what got passed along in the blood from sire to childe, in the turning. Something was: he knew that much. The older the sire, the more stable the childe, in terms of retaining the previous personality and not being so completely overwhelmed by the invasion of the demon. The more given in the initial feed, the quicker the rising. Those things were certain.  
  
But he’d begun to suspect it was more than that--that the demon that was passed was in some way the _same_ demon; that there was actual inheritance through the blood. To some extent, all the vampires of the Aurelian line were more like one another, for better and for worse, than they were like vamps of other kindreds. Same bad tempers. Same contrariness, even though it took different forms among the four of them. The family resemblances of a family of monsters. But it was even more specific than that: it seemed to him he’d been able to detect traces of Angelus in his get, Michael.  
  
And this dream business was something particular and unique to Drusilla, Spike’s own sire.  
  
In the matter of siring, the Aurelians, as usual, buggered it up with complications, contradictions. Dru had done the actual turning and was therefore Spike’s sire. Head of the clan was Darla, who’d turned Angelus, who’d turned Dru. But if Angelus was the one you answered to, that beat you down and forced your obedience…. If Angelus flayed the flesh off your spine enough times if you didn’t address him as Sire and get his boots blacked quick enough, Angelus was your true Sire and Drusilla, who’d turned you, only some unholy amalgam of sister, mother, bride.  
  
Aurelians had a constitutional incapability of leaving anything simple and straightforward. Him in love with the Slayer: just another instance. He was as bent as the rest. Relationships all skewed and confusing.  
  
But about Dru. Whose blood had actually turned him.  
  
Crazy she certainly was; but she also was a legitimate seeress: fey, second-sight, whatever you cared to call it. Might take years to figure out some nonsense she’d babbled out of nowhere, apropos of nothing. But the confirmation was there, firm and heavy as fate, if you chose to look for it, admit to it, recognize it when it came. It’d taken 120-some years since his turning for Dru’s casual comment about “burning baby fish swimming all around your head” to be grimly enacted by the Initiative implanting the microchip in his brain, but sooner or later the echo was there if you were prepared to see it and didn’t need the interpretation to be anything like literal to make a fit.  
  
And who could remember such claptrap anyway, when it didn’t connect to anything, mean anything when she said it?  
  
Well, apparently he could. Because he did.  
  
Angelus’ hard tutelage and his own inclination had combined to beat out of him the vapid, imaginative inclinations of that idiot wanker William, that he’d been before. For better than a century Spike had prided himself on being the compleat pragmatist and hedonist, living entirely in the moment and in the body. No looking back, or much forward, or away from what _was_. No silly-buggers vaporings. Very few memorable dreams.  
  
And now, these…hauntings.  
  
Very odd.  
  
Maybe it was loving the Slayer, true willingness to transform himself into whatever was needed to become what she might love in return, that had cracked through the protective cynicism to the wet, soppy, soft-headed poet buried shallow underneath. Or maybe it was just the fact of such a profound surrender rather than the content of it or the intent. Simply being that open to whatever change might come upon him.  
  
Less open than Dru to the mysteries of powers, portents. But open.  
  
He didn’t know. Didn’t understand.  
  
And introspection was worse than useless because nobody else knew or cared. No vampire he’d ever run into had the least interest in such things. And for all the Council of Wankers’ endless tomes and scribblings on vampire lore, their entire interest stretched only to the quickest, most effective ways to kill as many of them as possible. No aid there, of a certainty.  
  
Nobody he could talk to about it, or really wanted to, such disquieting images as those he’d wakened from, clear to him now as actual memory.  
  
No point, no use.  
  
He got himself dressed, had some blood as the children were finishing their dinners, and then they all went out together, through the yard and then the back yard of Casa Summers on the next block. Spike thought he could feel, smell rain in the air, and said as much to Willow when he met her in the hall, waiting to monitor his experiment at impersonating a canary.  
  
“Can still feel it,” he added, nodding at the shut basement door. “Nowhere near as bad as it was, but no trouble knowin’ something sorcerous got done down there. No, none whatever. No.”  
  
The residue of the blood spell was so strong that he didn’t even feel the Slayer coming up behind him and jerked a little when her hand landed on his shoulder.  
  
“Jumpy,” Buffy observed.  
  
“Some. I guess,” Spike admitted. “H’lo, love.”  
  
Buffy asked Willow, “Do we need to know more than that?” kindly trying to get him out of any nearer approach.  
  
“It’s all right,” Spike said at once. “Distance of maybe fifteen feet, how much difference can that make? Just ‘cause you don’t feel it don’t mean it’s not there. Have to know--“ And then he stopped short, having to force himself to recall the name that belonged in what was suddenly a hole in his mind. “--know that it’s not gonna do any harm to…Dawn.”  
  
Hole all filled up, with her name and all his names for her, just as it should be, and what an odd thing to find all that missing, having to be dredged up by an effort of will.  
  
Adding, “I’ll just do this now, then we can get gone,” Spike stepped away from Buffy’s steadying hand, opened the basement door, and went down.  
  
Descending the stairs, he went to game face, telling himself that it was to sharpen his sight and all his senses, take advantage of the greater acuity the demon provided. But the demon didn’t like it any better than he did, and sight was only a distraction.  
  
At the foot of the stairs, he shut his eyes and let himself be buffeted by the fierce currents of ambient magic. Willow, she’d said she’d set crystals in place to power a dampening field: continue bleeding the magic off, beyond whatever wholesale dissipation she’d done. The cardinal points, she’d said, and one for good measure in the middle.  
  
He could make out that focus now: the one the other crystals fed into. Pretty much like a drain, the force shallower there and indefinably more directed. Moving to it was moving to a center. The surrounding motion had a pattern, was no longer just random swirls of force.  
  
And quite without his intention, the dream overtook him again, clearer than memory. Reenacted in all its colors and feelings.  
  
He saw/was himself crouched on a low hill under an orange sky like there were vast fires roundabout but none where he was. Heavy smell of smoke from things natural and unnatural burning. He hurt, he’d taken damage, but that didn’t matter because no opposition remained, everywhere he looked he saw only vampires like himself, all in game face, jubilant as he was. All connected. He knew if he so much as looked in some direction, he could send a troop there, obedient to his will, an accustomed extension of his arm, his sight. And that was because their attention was all on him, focused, full of the exultant joy of wholesale destruction that was the demons’ birthright and expression. It was wonderful. They’d won. He turned to the Slayer, that he felt beside him, and she was glorious, bright as a flame, so full of energy and life that he did the only thing appropriate: sank fangs into her throat and drank her down. And it felt perfectly fine and splendid every second he was doing it. Everyone felt how wonderful it was.  
  
As before, the dream claimed him completely. And then spat him out, shaken and horrified, standing in the middle of a dark basement with pipes overhead and the vague smell of laundry. And the fading intoxication of Slayer blood in his mouth.  
  
He couldn’t get back up the stairs fast enough.  
  
**********  
  
It was a joint patrol, all the SITs, Spike’s troop and Buffy’s. Sweep the major cemeteries, then converge on the High School perched on top of the Hellmouth itself. If all went well until then, take down any roaming Turok-han they found there. Dust them all.  
  
The packs were sent ahead in alternate arcs. The front of each arc scouted and, if given opportunity, engaged. Then the rest of the arc swept up and overwhelmed whatever was left. Were they to meet something big, both packs would come together on it like a clap of hands.  
  
Easily loping at Spike’s right, Dawn pronounced critically, “You’re _off_.”  
  
“I know it, Bit. No help for it. Just you keep close, that’s all.”  
  
“How close?” she retorted--almost a complaint.  
  
“This close.” He seized her hand and refused her attempts to shake off his grip.  
  
A shrill whistle: the lead of his pack had found something.  
  
When, with Dawn still in protesting tow, Spike reached the SITs, he found that the pack had hit a nest, apparently based in a vacant house adjoining the cemetery. The SITs were engaged by pairs among the tombstones, around and under the street lights, swirling across the street, pursuing into the front yard. Buffy’s troop was coming in from the left, heading directly for the house itself. Halted on the opposite sidewalk, Spike watched Buffy kick the door in. She and her SITs disappeared inside.  
  
Spike scanned the remaining vamps struggling in the open: completely disorganized, easily isolated, surrounded, and then dispatched by his children in pairs and fours, just as he’d taught them. The vampires. _The cousins_ , he thought, as Amanda dusted the last one, a woman, and she was gone. His children, Amanda, were looking to him for orders--a wave to send them into the house or a lifted hand to hold them in place, and with them still, their faces turned to him, Spike lost all sense of the flow. Some vital connection unhitched, and he had no idea what to tell the children or even why they were waiting.  
  
_Matrix moment_ , came the thought. _Glitch in the program. Now they start coming out of the walls…._  
  
His place was guarding Buffy’s back, her children didn’t know to do that because that was his place, so why was he still here instead of inside?  
  
Ignoring the standing SITs, Spike flipped the haft of the small axe up into his left hand as he crossed the street, moving faster. He was nearly to the front steps when Chloe came out, and Buffy right behind her, grimacing and waving away the dust as he’d seen her do a thousand times, and then the rest of her pack emerging by twos and threes.  
  
Buffy noticed him, frowned slightly, and said, “What is it?”  
  
Spike shook his head, embarrassed to be caught staring at her like a lummox. He was turning away, tipping the axe onto his shoulder, when Buffy caught his elbow and wheeled him about to face her again. He tilted his head in inquiry.  
  
Buffy studied him a moment longer, then lifted her arms, waving all the SITs in. “That was beyond excellent,” she told them. “It went exactly the way it’s supposed to. Absolutely nothing went wrong. I think it would be tempting fate to take on anything else tonight. Besides, I heard somebody say something about rain. I declare the patrol over. Everybody, get home and tell Willow I authorize ice cream money for everybody.”  
  
Surprised smiles were succeeded by grins as Buffy made her announcement. Buffy was generally pretty miserly with her praise, and for her to call off a patrol halfway through was unheard of. By the time she authorized ice-cream, half the SITs were hopping with excitement. Almost exactly half: his own lot were waiting for his word, Amanda and Kim standing to the fore and trying not to look too hopeful.  
  
Actually Spike was pretty pleased with them himself. And truth be told, he’d lost all enthusiasm for the patrol. He told them, “Well, what are you still standin’ here for? You heard the Slayer.”  
  
Everybody broke into broad grins, there were squeaks and small yells, and hopping became universal. Amanda called the mark, and the SITs went dashing off together, whooping and laughing and calling to one another.  
  
Buffy watched them out of sight, smiling. Then she turned and lifted up on her toes and kissed him for quite a long time. Spike’s reaction was much like the SITs’ had been--happy incredulous surprise gradually replaced by wholehearted enthusiasm.  
  
Long after she should have run out of breath, she dropped back onto her heels and laid her cheek against his chest. “Suddenly,” she remarked softly, “I didn’t feel like sharing.”  
  
“Well, that was nice,” Spike responded, glad of the chance to slide fingers through her hair. “For a beginning.”  
  
“Thought we could use a little alone time. You look hungry. Do you feel hungry?”  
  
Something in him did not like that question. And wouldn’t have answered it for any price. Shaking the feeling away, he turned with her and began walking slowly, shoulders a bit closed in, and she stuck her arm through his, the way she did.  
  
He began, “Wish I had that old motorbike back,” and then stopped because that sounded strange to him. Stumbling all over himself in his head now. “Love, I’m off beyond all reckoning, and I dunno why.”  
  
“The basement,” she suggested.  
  
“Yeah. Maybe. Can’t properly catch hold….” His right hand enacted it: closing over something, losing it. “Anyways, that bike, it’s down in L.A. Left it there when I…left.”  
  
“I see,” said Buffy gravely. “Severe case of vocabulary deprivation.”  
  
“Or something. Bugger! Maybe we should take a turn by some hardware store. Pick me up a new set of chains, something--”  
  
“Don’t joke about that.”  
  
“Oh, you figure I’m joking, do you? Not goin’ back down in that basement, try to recycle that other set, I’ll tell you that. Witch may have given the all clear on it, but that’s one nasty swamp of confusion an’ I’m not goin’ back there anytime soon.”  
  
“How’s the bed?” Buffy inquired, all wide-eyed and cheerful.  
  
Spike goggled at her. “Bed.”  
  
“Brass, heavy as sin, spindles for, you know, tying things to. Four corners, big round posts. For maybe _tying_ things to. That the furniture scavenging patrol found on Friday. And Xander collected with his truck. And then the box spring and the mattress, and everybody broke nails putting together for a surprise, and you were all lonesome in by yourself all afternoon. _That_ bed.”  
  
“Knew there was something I loved you for, Slayer--it’s your subtlety.”  
  
Buffy made a pout. “Well, hinting wasn’t getting it done. And you still haven’t answered the question.”  
  
They’d stopped. Spike bent his forehead against hers. “Which question was that now, pet.”  
  
“The one I’ll be completely mortified to have to ask you in so many words, Spike-of-my-life. The one whose answer better be yes, or I’m gonna have you examined by experts.”  
  
“Oh, _that_ question. Answer’s yes, of course. But….”  
  
“I am not in the mood for but. With one ‘T.’”  
  
Spike sighed. “But I think it’s haunted. Or something.”  
  
“Haunted.”  
  
“Or something. Yeah.”  
  
She pushed him out to arm’s length. Or pushed herself. Same thing, in the end. “So let’s see if I have this straight. My basement has a giant magical whirlpool nobody can detect but you--”  
  
“Yeah. Suck you down, quick as that.”  
  
“--and your basement has now been graced with a haunted bed, and you just noticed it.”  
  
“Well, there’s my old place,” Spike suggested. “Crypt. Kind of busted up, but then it always was, more or less. And it’s quiet, anyways.”  
  
Buffy folded her arms, never a good sign. “Are you suggesting that I’m loud?”  
  
Spike hung his head, smiling small. “Well, yeah. Sometimes. Been known to happen.”  
  
Buffy commandeered his arm, both her arms locked strong around it, and started marching determinedly across the street. “That’s it: expert consulting time.”  
  
“What in hell?”  
  
“Gonna see Giles.”  
  
“The hell we are.” He stopped, set himself. So she yanked him. He protested, “No.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You’re joking, right?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Well, you better be, because if you think I’m gonna--”  
  
**********  
  
“Haunted,” said the Watcher, polishing his glasses.  
  
“Or something. Yeah.” Spike shrugged, settling lower in the creaky scoop chair, boots on the crappy little coffee table, looking distractedly around at the mean little motel room, mini-efficiency, whatever. Buffy had blessedly left on an emergency liquor run, since Rupert had nothing to hand, or Spike wouldn’t have still been there, no chance. But she’d be brassed off if she came back and found him gone, after she’d made such a thing of getting them there in the first place. Spike turned the small axe over and over between his hands.  
  
“‘Tisn’t as if it’s just me,” he argued sullenly. “All right, I’m _off,_ I admit to it. Never claimed otherwise, did I? But she is, too. Call a patrol off in the middle, or just started, is closer to it. Come over all broody, sodding bloody ‘alone time.’ What kind of a thing is that, tell me?”  
  
Having finished with his glasses, Rupert put them back on and perched himself sideways on the desk chair. “Let’s just stay with the ‘haunted’ part, shall we?”  
  
“Look, Rupert, let’s just chalk it up to ‘Oh, Spike’s all bloody crazy again, let’s chain him up to something,’ as per usual, and leave it at that, all right? ‘Tisn’t as if it hasn’t happened before. Got Dru’s fucking dreams in my head, don’t I? And what’s that all about? Just figure I’m crazy and be done with it.”  
  
“But you claim it’s affecting Buffy, as well.”  
  
“Well, yeah. Call the patrol off, send the SITs off for fucking ice cream, what would you think? Drag me off to talk to _you_ , what’s she expect, does she think you hung out a shingle as a wanker ‘relationship counselor’ or suchlike? You can’t be loving this either, all the poncy _feelings_ crap.”  
  
“Back to the haunted part,” Rupert suggested calmly, looking at Spike down his nose, the way he did, goddamned librarian nancy Watcher.  
  
“Well, ‘tisn’t the bed. It’s me. I just said that other. For something to say.” Spike tipped his head back and rubbed his eyes. “Bed’s fine. This has been goin’ on awhile. Long while, actually. Bloody years, actually. Oh, sod it, Rupert, there’s no fucking point to this.”  
  
Couldn’t budge the man off his damn poncy reserve with a goddam wrecking ball. Made Spike want to hit him, and he could, chip all disabled, and Rupert knew it, too, and therefore ought to ease off on the provoking, but oh no, no clue whatever, just carry on as per usual.  
  
Spike thumped the hand axe into the coffee table and left it there, so he wouldn’t fucking behead the Watcher by mistake making a gesture or something.  
  
Giles said, “What’s been going on awhile?” When Spike only glowered at him, Giles added, “I detect the absence of a noun here.”  
  
“Like I fucking care.”  
  
“Yes. Quite. Except that you _do_ , it’s perfectly obvious if even Buffy has noticed it--”  
  
Spike leveled a finger at him. “Gonna tell her you said that.”  
  
The Watcher folded his hands. “Spike, why don’t you set aside the bloody histrionics and simply tell me what this is all about?”  
  
“Well, I dunno, do I? Just…that something is off. Big time. Major off. And it’s coming from lots of directions. Lots of ways. Hellmouth, maybe. I dunno. Say, did I tell you I ran into one of Angelus’ get? Chap named Michael, Mike. Last night at Willy’s.”  
  
“Spike, we haven’t had anything resembling a conversation in, minimally, three months. At which point you were hearing voices and seeing things on a regular basis, and apparently eating people again, and siring vampires. Oh, and being tied or chained to handy bits of furniture and fed with a cup and a straw. So I would hardly call any words exchanged between us ‘conversation’ in the normal meaning of the term. And I’ve barely seen you since you and Buffy became…reacquainted.”  
  
“Oh, ‘reacquainted,’ that’s a fine word. Fucking ‘reacquainted.’”  
  
“So, no: somehow the subject of a vampire named Mike has not come up in all the conversations we’ve not had since that point. I’ll tell you now, all this avoidance is beginning to concern me. And if Buffy asks my advice, I intend to give it to her.”  
  
“Fine. You do that. Told her to go pick up a new set of chains, didn’t I?”  
  
“Did you?”  
  
“Yeah. Ask her. She’ll tell you.”  
  
“Well then, I might as well wait and ask her, as you say, since you’re obviously not going to volunteer anything pertinent.”  
  
“Like I fucking _know_ what’s pertinent!”  
  
“Spike.” The Watcher being patient if it bloody well killed him, which it still might. “I know that you’re sensitive to…influences. Patterns, at times, before they’ve fully formed. Off before the gun has fired, so to speak.”  
  
“Right. Goin’ off half-cocked, you mean. Story of my bleeding unlife, that is, you got that right. Be a desperate bad choice to head up General Motors. Or organize your basic slumber party. Much less try to organize the cousins into anything resembling a fighting force.”  
  
Giles’ eyes nailed him to the spot. “Cousins.”  
  
“Colonial vampire slang, Rupert. Indicating other vampires. Different bloodlines. Or no known bloodline at all. Politer way of saying ‘bastards.’ Inclusive of about nine tenths of the vampire race. You might want to make a note of it.” Hearing the door, Spike looked around, and it was Buffy with a bottle. “Oh, ministering bloody angels, pet, what took you so long. Rupert’s about to send me clear round the bend, Mr. Echo, repeating about every third word. ‘M way too old for Mr. Rogers at this point. Not the desired demographic. Never mind that, gimme.”  
  
While Buffy was reaching for one of the water tumblers all done up nifty in their little sanitary paper skirts on the desk, Spike swiped the bottle out of her hand and uncapped it without even bothering to look at the label. Put down as much as he thought he could take at one go, then waited for it to hit. At least take some of the frantic edge off. _Off_ still being the operative word here. God, if he had to go back into those chains, he’d fucking curl up and die. Couldn’t get much worse than that. Well, it could. And it had. But not lately, and he wasn’t braced for something like that again. Didn’t know how to brace, just went all _off_ and hadn’t a sodding clue what’d set it off. Same word again. Fucking vocabulary deficiency.  
  
Giles was disrobing one of the tumblers in his prissy way and laying the paper aside, all neat and tidy. Then he leaned to swipe the bottle back from Spike, who let him have it, and poured himself a measure after making a great show of cleaning off the neck where Spike had drunk from it.  
  
“The current topic,” Giles informed Buffy, who was taking a slow seat on the edge of the bed, “appears to be rallying the local vampires against the First, with Spike as Commander-in-Chief.” Buffy’s eyes got large, looking across at Spike.  
  
“In nobody’s bad dream, pet. No sodding chance whatever. ‘Tisn’t as though I don’t know that.”  
  
Giles finished his sip. “Who has suggested it, or is this merely one of your daft schemes being wisely discarded? Before the fact, for a change?”  
  
“Well, that Mike. That was what I was telling you. But I didn’t need him to tell me. See it all quite plain on my own, thanks ever so, and have done for awhile.” Spike hunched forward, elbows on knees, shoulders tight: like any second he might come out of the chair and fight something. Looking from Buffy to Giles with frowning, half-sullen seriousness, he let out pent-up words in an unconsidered burst: “I don’t think either of you properly appreciates how desperate it’s got for the local vamps here. The cousins. Being driven off their territories, the grande melee of all against fucking all…. And where they gonna go? L.A., and try to poach off some established territory there? Get their fucking heads cut off soon as somebody catches ‘em at it? Take to the woods and eat, what, bats? Gophers? Goddam moose? All the ones got someplace else to be, or think they do, or hope they might, they’re already long gone. Before I came back, even, all souled up and Bedlam-certified. Down in the school basement, trying to make anything, something, fit together and make sense, an’ all the voices. All the masks. And then after, on the wheel, over and over, watch the seal open, watch ‘em rise, watch ‘em come…. Telling me how a Turok-han’s worth ten of us miserable worthless corrupted part-demon mutts, pure blood gonna wipe us all out, once an’ for all, Grand Evil Master Plan Racial Cleansing thing. And you think the cousins don’t know it? Think they’re all of a twitter with demon solidarity forever, go ahead and eat our food supply, we don’t mind, we share, and wipe us out in the bargain because it’s all for the greater Evil? Not hardly. They’d fight, if they knew a bloody thing about it. If there was somebody could make ‘em quit squabbling over the last scraps, wasting it all on that, against each other. Somebody to point ‘em at a target and tell ‘em what to do once they got there, except make bad faces at it. Make ‘em fucking _mind._ Make ‘em learn which end of the pointy stick to hang onto, anything beyond the splendid Stone Age purity of fists and fangs, that’s all they know or care about. But not me. No. I’d just get ‘em wasted wholesale. Big fiasco. My skills do not lie in that direction. Might as well call the thing by its name and be done with it. But it’s a pure shame to have it go to waste and send the children in instead. They’ll be fucking cut to pieces, Rupert, first time they try anything beyond skirmishing, sniping around the edges, clip a few Bringers, a few sodding vamp nests, like tonight and then ice cream afterwards, for a treat. For their victory. They’re all gonna fucking die, Rupert, and there’s no way of getting them ready for that any better than they are. Fine children, Rupert, and what am I to say to them?”  
  
“Yes. Well.” Deciding that occasioned further spectacles-cleaning, Giles passed the bottle over to free his hands for the task. “That’s…quite something. I can see how you’d find that a disconcerting matter to have on your mind.”  
  
Spike interrupted drinking and swallowed to retort, “Hell with my mind, Rupert. ‘S’not the issue here.”  
  
While Spike put the level of the bottle down, Giles conceded, “No, I believe that it’s not. Your concerns are quite sane enough. Probably even realistic. Buffy. Have you two discussed this?”  
  
Buffy spread her hands. “This is word one.”  
  
“Yes,” said Giles. “Yes, I see. And the dreams you spoke of, Spike. Is it safe to assume they relate to this?”  
  
A little better, Spike thought. Some blurred around the edges now. He didn’t have to see it all so plain. Everything not stumbling into everything else, inside his head. He had some of his own patience back now. Some of his calm.  
  
“No, because it’s not gonna happen like that.” Before Giles could echo “like that?” like a bloody parrot, as he was clearly going to, Spike specified, “Like in the dream. Can’t change sides now. No going back. I know that. Don’t want to anyhow.”  
  
Spike regarded Buffy: sitting so quiet all this while, frown-faced and concerned but not interrupting with smart-mouth remarks, trying to see her way through and understand instead of stomping on whatever she didn’t like, to scry meanings from whatever pieces the stomping made, like tea leaves. So nice and so worried, like she’d never do such a thing as chain him up to a chair or pitch him through a wall. Hardly like herself at all. He loved her very hard, that minute.  
  
“C’mere, love.” Spike reached and dragged the other chair closer, for Buffy to sit beside him. “’S’not your fault it’s taken me this long to come up against the blind wall you been flat against awhile now. Long odds always been something I more liked than not. Dunno why it should seem different now, why that’s put me all off.”  
  
Almost shyly, Buffy came from her seat on the bed, leaving a few wrinkles in the antiseptic nasty puke-green bedspread, oh no, that wouldn’t do, Rupert’s room all untidy with the glasses naked and the bed wildly disarranged like a goddam orgy had taken place, four lines in the bedspread and that was wrong. Four lines was wrong.  
  
Five, there should be. Four and one for….  
  
Tucking up in the chair, Buffy clasped his free hand, and Spike looked frowning from the lines to her two hands clasped around his, then back to the bed, trying to come up with the sense of it, so close, just barely out of reach, couldn’t quite close his hand on it….  
  
“Dawn.”  
  
Buffy said blankly, “What?” and Rupert started assuring him plenty of time still remained before sunrise, like he didn’t _know_ that, no clue, no sense, no penny drop except for him.  
  
He said, realized, “Dawn’s gone.”  
  
And they both still just gaped at him, no clue whatever. Buffy said, puzzled, “Who’s Dawn?”  
  
Spike flung the bottle against the furthest wall.


	3. Section 1: Stirrings — The Dance of Sea and Shore

Buffy said, “But I don’t have a sister. Never had a sister. I’d know, wouldn’t I?”  
  
Knowing every word out of his mouth put him closer to being classed as a certified looney, and all that went with it, Spike insisted, “You did. Not at first, only for a couple years in the middle and now gone again, but you did, pet. Rupert, get me a pen, something--”  
  
Still wearing his pursy skeptical humoring-dangerous-loonies face, Giles handed over a click-top ballpoint. While he still had hold of the name, and that so slippery it was like trying to pinch quicksilver, Spike wrote it on the back of his left hand: DAWN. So long as that didn’t vanish, he still had it as a reminder.  
  
“Dawn Elizabeth Marie Summers. Roundabout fourteen years old, first I saw her. Actually saw her. ‘Cause the second I saw her, she’d already been filled into things that’d happened before, long as I been in Sunnydale. Things Dru had said about her, when Dru never once laid eyes on her. Things she’d said to me….” And he had to strain for it again, he was losing hold of it, something trying to pull it away. “--Dawn, when it seemed plausible she’d’ve been there, except she wasn’t. An’ me nodding like a git, like all the rest of you lot, at the instant sister. School records changed. Your mom, Buffy, accepting her just like that, just like she’d been there always. Can’t have been an easy thing to convince Joyce she’d had and raised a second child. Family photos all with Dawn in ‘em at age five, age ten, one on a pony. Everything all complete, the thorough bastards. Expect they’re all changed back again now.”  
  
Catching Giles’ eye, Spike snarled, “An’ don’t you think I know how this sounds? Do you figure I’m doin’ it for fun here? I know it’s all been took back from you now, but just give me a fair hearing, all right? ‘Cause I never been more serious about a thing in my life, unlife, at least hear me out. It’s--”  
  
An almost unfelt hitch in his mind and it was gone again, blanked out, and he had no idea what he was so _off_ and upset about. And then he saw the name on his hand and clenched that fist, willing himself not to be buggered with. “Dawn was made to be a key, could unlock dimensions. Some monks made her, I was told. If you were crazy enough, seems like, you could still see what she was made from: some kind of green sparkly energy. Guess I never was crazy enough or at the right time: never saw it, myself. Don’t remember seeing, anyway, or maybe that’s been took….” Spike shook his head, couldn’t afford to get distracted. “One thing about vamps: we’re hard to magic. It doesn’t stick proper, or long, or sometimes at all. So a point came when I knew something I recollected about her wasn’t real, was a lie put into my head, when nobody else had twigged. Knew Buffy’d never had any little sis. Wouldn’t buy that lie anymore, for all she was standin’ right there in front of me.”  
  
Spike momentarily had enough of the pieces that he was granted a moment’s visual image: tall child with coltish adolescent limbs, lovely mouth pursed as often as not or a splendid smile; slender fingers, fall of long brown hair, straight and shiny, and enormous bright eyes alertly watching everything. He couldn’t name the color of the eyes before the glimpse went dark. And it was desperately hard to keep losing her like this, over and over, same hole opening and swallowing up whatever he was trying to keep hold of, patient and inexorable as sucking quicksand or an advancing tide, and presently he’d lose all of it entirely and forget there’d ever been anything to lose.  
  
He’d had his mind fucked with by experts. You’d think he’d have worked up more resistance to it, be able to stand aside from it and see it happening, not get dragged down by the undertow. Except, that was what the dreams did to him now. From his inheritance from Dru or whatever it was, and he’d got sidetracked again, it didn’t relent or quit pulling for a single fucking second, something with his hand, and the letters were still there but for a moment didn’t cohere into a name. Only a word: DAWN.  
  
Gravely, neutrally, Giles said, “I have no memory of such a girl.”  
  
Spike looked at Buffy, who was still somehow refraining from asking if he really felt all right and wouldn’t he sooner have a nice lie down, a nice shag, and everything better in the morning. After some pacing, she’d settled back on the bed. She was trying to listen to him, sweetheart that she was, when he didn’t know half the time what he was saying or by what progression he’d come to whatever his current point might have been before the quicksand ate it.  
  
At least they weren’t laughing at him, and he hadn’t lost his temper nor his wits. Not altogether.  
  
“Don’t care if you believe it or not,” Spike told them--fierce, stubborn, and desperate. “It’s enough if you believe that _I_ believe it. Even if that makes you figure I’m the biggest bull-looney yet hatched. The point’s not to persuade you. The point is for you to help me get her back. Just pretend for a second here. If this ever happened, that monks took some ancient energy and made it into a girl-shaped dimensional key, with everything that went with it, all the trimmings, what monks would that have been? We’re not talking Brother Andrew here, or Brother Warren. What was done was large, and complicated, and so goddam thorough it’s hard to get my mind around even now. What--”  
  
“A change,” Giles interrupted raptly, “in the nature of reality, albeit on a fairly localized basis, to the least, smallest detail. All accomplished by non-material means.”  
  
“Yeah. Right. Think about _how_ such a thing could be done, and who could have done it, roundabout two years back, and maybe the quicksand don’t extend as far or as strong that way as if you kept trying to come at the thing direct.”  
  
“An interesting puzzle,” said Giles, plainly going into full Watcher mode. “The pen, please, Spike.” Accepting the pen without glancing either at it or at Spike, Giles pulled a sheet of stationery from the desk drawer and began jotting quick notes. “Two years ago, you say,” he remarked without looking around.  
  
“Best I know, yeah. And spilling backwards from there.”  
  
“Records will clearly be of no use, then,” said Giles. “They all will have been altered. Birth certificate, immunization records: that sort of documentation.”  
  
“With all they did, doesn’t seem likely they skipped any.”  
  
“Americans are the most documented creatures on the planet,” Giles commented, still writing. “To have any concept of the number and variety of items that would require falsification, our hypothetical monks would either have to be Americans themselves or have excellent contacts with appropriate knowledge of the educational system, the ways of storing actuarial information, medical records, census data…. I believe we can therefore eliminate any actual known religious body, any of the recognized denominations. This is too secular. Not the grand sweep but the niggling detail.  
  
“In fact, I’m more inclined to think our monks are in fact not monks at all, but lawyers. With a longer reach than most. And a clearer knowledge of the nature of reality and the practical side of metaphysics than most lawyers presumably possess. A near infinite capability of attending to the smallest detail. And access to almost limitless magic.” Turning, Giles stuck an earpiece of his dangling glasses in his mouth like a lollipop, looking Watcherishly pleased: half Cambridge don and half a thug happy at the contents of your wallet. Or like a wicked Christmas elf. “Purely as an intellectual exercise, it occurs to me that since it could have been done, it very likely _was_ done. And two things argue powerfully in your favor, Spike. One, you’re the last person I would conceive of, to invent such a complex and absurd hoax to no immediate purpose. Second, you’re among the world’s most miserably unconvincing liars. So I don’t believe you concocted this, and I don’t believe your concern is anything other than sincere. Which of course doesn’t rule out your being a dupe or a looney; but I’m willing to defer judgment on that for the moment.”  
  
Forlorn, bereft, Spike could find no reply because he no longer had any notion what Giles was talking about. In trying to follow Giles’ thought around the periphery, he’d lost the center.  
  
Reading Spike’s face, Giles picked up the sheet and held it at a longsighted distance. “Dawn Elizabeth Marie Summers.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Spike, on no breath, barely aloud. “Yeah, that’s right…. Good to know I’m stupid enough to serve.”  
  
Giles resumed his glasses so he could look at Spike over the top of them. “No need to get testy. The continuing clean-up effort is itself persuasive evidence. Were it not, you wouldn’t be having the problems keeping to your story that you evidently are. Furthermore, given the location and other factors, I propose quite an acceptable candidate for our spurious monks: a law firm called Wolfram and Hart.”  
  
Spike shook his head. “Never heard of ‘em.”  
  
“No reason you should. But they might have done such a thing on their own behalf, or on that of a still-unknown client. They possess the resources and the means. Metaphysical Mafia, as near as makes no difference. They’re headquartered in Los Angeles.”  
  
“Angel. You mean, ask Angel to sort it out.”  
  
“Quite.”  
  
On identical impulse they both looked at Buffy to find that she’d opted out of the troubling, nonsensical speculations by falling asleep, head pillowed on a folded arm. She looked about twelve.  
  
Of Buffy’s exes, Angel was without question the one Spike hated most. That, in addition to all the other saw-edged issues between him and his Sire, made the call a no-brainer.  
  
“No,” Spike said flatly. “Not unless there’s no other way.”  
  
“Very well. Since I gather our interest in the matter is practical rather than theoretical, whether Wolfram and Hart be agent or principal, their motives in doing such a thing are moot. Our only concern is to undo--or more correctly, to redo--what was done to produce” (a glance at the paper) “Dawn in the first place. Presumably she has reverted to her native state,” (another glance) “a mass of ‘green, sparkling energy.’ Logically, then, the next step would be to consult--”  
  
“Willow. Yeah. What time’s it got to be,” Spike inquired dully.  
  
Giles consulted a watch. “Just gone eleven.”  
  
Spike rubbed his eyes. He felt a headache building, maybe one of chiplike proportions. He was due at Willy’s in an hour. Wouldn’t be free to talk to the witch until past four. He didn’t believe he could hold onto his focus that long. Even setting it aside to sort out the best choice made him feel it slipping, getting away from him again.  
  
“She was made from Buffy,” Spike mentioned. “Out of Buffy. To be a sister to her. So Buffy would want to protect her. Keep her safe, because she was family. I forget why.”  
  
“What: as in cloning?”  
  
“No. Don’t think so. Dunno. Maybe, partly. On the pattern of Buffy, some way. Who she is. The part that’s not Slayer. Except…brave, Dawn is. Fierce as a Turk. Just like Buffy is. Hangs onto a thing like grim death till she’s done with it. Got….” He lost the thought and made a vague gesture. “I dunno.”  
  
Giles dutifully noted that information down, then said, “I tell you what, Spike: I’ll give you a lift to Willy’s, then take Buffy home and consult with Willow, as best I can. Explain at least the theoretical bases, and my conclusions. Then I’ll bring her to Willy’s, and you can discuss it with her.”  
  
So long as it was a plan, and he didn’t have to make it, Spike would have gone along with nearly anything. He forced himself out of the chair and went to wake Buffy. He rubbed her back, shook her a little. “C’mon, love. Time to go home.”  
  
Sitting bolt upright, Buffy declared, “Giraffe pajamas.”  
  
“What’s that, pet?”  
  
“Dawn has giraffe pj’s. And she likes French toast.”  
  
“That’s a good thing to know. When we get her back, maybe you can make her some.”  
  
Buffy blinked at him blearily. “Who?”  
  
**********  
  
By the time Giles showed up at Willy’s with a yawning, somnambulistic Willow with severe bedhead and mismatched socks, Spike was no longer expecting them and had done what he could to self-medicate the headache with cheap alcohol.  
  
When Willow made him a little waggling-fingers wave, Spike just looked at her. In game face, because that also helped keep the pain tolerable. Or at least let him not care much about it, which worked out about the same.  
  
“Hullo, Red. Rupert. What d’you want?”  
  
As the two of them traded a Significant Look, a Ceynar demon down the way raised an appendage for a refill, so Spike left them to see to the demon, who was drinking something complicated comprised of crème de menthe, ammonia, bile, and butterscotch flavoring over crushed ice. Then he swung back to take care of them.  
  
“Coffee,” Willow decided. “Espresso, if you got it. Large.”  
  
Spike shook his head. Can send out for it, though, if you want.” While he was looking around to locate Huey, the minion he had seconding him tonight, Willow leaned across the bar and started doing something to his shirt with something that stank of mothballs. He jerked out of reach, startled and mistrustful.  
  
“Don’t be such a baby,” Willow admonished. “Doesn’t hurt. See? We both have one.”  
  
She held it up, pinched between two fingers, to let him see: a small twist of greenery, herbs, tied with thread to a safety pin. Both she and Giles had a similar tiny boutonniere pinned on.  
  
“What is it?” Spike asked warily.  
  
“Nothing that’s gonna hurt. Mostly rosemary, forget-me-not stems wrapped widdershins, rubbed with camphor to clear the head, other stuff you don’t care about at all and just take it, Spike. Stick it in your pocket if you don’t want to wear it.”  
  
The second Spike touched the sprig, the headache clamped down like the vise in the old commercials, but he didn’t connect that to the sprig and therefore continued the motion and slowly slid it into a pocket of his jeans, waiting to be able to see straight and think straight again. When that didn’t happen right away, he poured himself a shot from the nearest bottle he found in reach and downed it. Horrible: apple schnapps.  
  
While he was distracted by that, Willow chirped, “What’s that on your hand?”  
  
Squinting hard and letting go several times, trying to clear his sight, Spike responded, “Dunno, must’ve got something on it, what’s--” Then he saw it: the letters. The word. The name. “Bloody hell.”  
  
“Thought Police being a little overzealous?” Willow inquired sympathetically. “Wanting to get the last scraps all tidied up, get the job done and go home? Brought in the big guns on you, it looks like. Because you’re the only one who still remembers. Except for the little flash of giraffe pj’s that Buffy had, that Giles told me about. Only confirmation we got, but it’s not as if we need any more at this point, we’re all together on the same train here even if most of us are riding blind, and now about that espresso--”  
  
Spike located Huey, and the Espresso Pump order got specified although Giles objected to the $ 20 tab. Spike explained about the delivery charge. Giles grumbled but paid up. Tightwad. Spike let them into the back room, empty tonight, then left them there and started looking for somebody to cover for him behind the bar, turning down two offered fights on the grounds of headache, which counted as a pass and hurt his odds but not as bad as a loss would so what the hell. And he checked the time and figured what he’d do to Huey if he wasn’t back within the required fifteen minutes, meanwhile stoically reading through Giles’ chicken scratchings on the sheet of motel stationery, reclaiming as much of what he’d remembered as he could, and Willow’s memory charm to prevent it all slipping away again.  
  
With each phrase read, the headache receded a little, like the fight between the tide and the dry ground, up and down a beach.  
  
And he thought, _We’re trying here, Bit,_ recovering his name for her that wasn’t on the sheet or anything he’d had so far: it just came to him when he’d made it a place to be and could hold it. A sudden easing: a clarity. Like a breath of better air.  
  
About the time Huey returned, Willy got back from a late date and was willing to take over the bar as long as Spike either made up the time or docked himself for it, which was reasonable. Spike remembered to commend Huey on his promptness and sent him on another errand, then took the cardboard carry-tray of cups with his own glass into the back room and set it on the kitten poker table. Willow and Giles each took an espresso, which left four. Willow explained that two were for him, and he declined. So Giles was annoyed and commented that, in that case, Spike might have said something beforehand.  
  
“Didn’t ask me, did you?” Spike responded, lifting out the glass of Jim Beam he’d set in the tray, more palatable than apple schnapps. “Next time, ask first. You can save ‘em for later, I s’pose.”  
  
“The whipped cream goes all flat and blah,” Willow remarked sadly, dipping a tall plastic spoon. “They don’t keep well. Which brings me cleverly to my theory.”  
  
Spike turned a chair and sat, arms folded across the back. He set the sheet of stationery on the table where it wouldn’t be endangered by coffee spills.  
  
“Well, at least get rid of that,” Giles requested peevishly, with a sharp gesture Spike couldn’t interpret.  
  
“What?”  
  
Willow made a plainer gesture across her forehead, explaining sotto voce, “You’re all bumpy. I think it makes him nervous.”  
  
“Hell with that. Demon bar: I can look however I please. An’ it helps with the headache.”  
  
Giles protested, “Spike, I cannot have an intelligent conversation with you looking like that.”  
  
“Then don’t. It’s Red who’s got the theory, innit?” Spike asked Willow, “He always this cranky, this time of night?”  
  
“Likely. Past his bedtime. And past mine too. So let’s get to it.”  
  
“Fine,” said Giles sourly. “Just fine.” He poked his spoon into whipped cream and sulked.  
  
“My theory,” Willow said, “is that this Dawn was never meant to last. She was made to put certain powers out of reach of anybody who might otherwise have been able to access them. That would have been Glory. Which is not how I remember it but we’re not gonna worry about that now. There was a fixed window of date and time, astrological conditions, blah, blah, blah, for Glory to open the dimensional portal. After that, she was basically screwed and stuck and out of luck, and no more need for Dawn, who would have just gone _poof,_ and everybody forget again, everything back the way it was before. But it didn’t quite work out like that because--”  
  
“Buffy jumped,” said Spike, not giving a damn if the Watcher didn’t like his expression. “I messed up, and Bit got cut, and Buffy went in her place.”  
  
“Again, not exactly the scenario I have, but it makes sense. And this is wonderful practice in entertaining two mutually contradictory and semi-impossible ideas before breakfast. Props to Lewis Carroll. Yea rah. So the dimensional portal gets opened, which means somebody switched on the Dawn, but then it gets shut again without Glory crossage or major dimensional suckage, crisis averted, which should mean that the Dawn poofed. Started with one Summers, ended with one Summers, the math works OK but it seems nobody at Dawn-Builders, Inc. notices that the wrong Summers got left behind in our reality. Alive, that is.” Willow briskly dabbled with her spoon to stir in the last of the melting whipped cream, then drank the result. “And with the Dawn still here, she continues to anchor the vast matrix of fake facts and fake memories put in place to support her because she’s kinda the lock code. Slight oops.” She patted with a napkin to eliminate a whipped cream moustache. “And then I probably contributed to the confusion by raising Buffy from the dead, against her will and without her consent, all duly noted, members of the jury.”  
  
Willow’s eyebrows had lifted while delivering those last remarks, but the eyes underneath were cold and expressionless as glass.  
  
Despite focusing tight on her words, the ideas, Spike still noticed the sly upslide of resentment and hostility, so shallow under the chirpiness. Masks tended to come off past midnight--no news to him.  
  
Having finished one espresso, Willow pried the lid off another and transferred straw and spoon meticulously without drips.  
  
“So time went by,” Willow continued, “as it tends to do, with Dawn and Buffy _both_ confusingly extant in the same dimension at the same time, both un-Naturally, which likely was very perplexing to Dawn-Builders, Inc. or Whatever: explanations lost into committee and red tape and CYA memos and the discrepancy pretty much forgotten. All well and good. Until our hypothetical Dawn, or rather _your_ hypothetical Dawn,” Willow corrected with a nod to Spike, “decides to stir up major mojo, blood magic, in our basement. At least I know it’s not my magic. I wouldn’t have done it that way. Or as Giles would be quick to tell me, ideally, I wouldn’t have done it at all…. I assume that on Friday evening, when I set up to dissipate the residual energy, I knew perfectly well who that magical signature belonged to but have since suffered brain-wipe and, well, there you are.”  
  
“Willow,” said Giles, full Watcher restraint back in place, maybe from the coffee, “might we get on with it.”  
  
“Definitely. Getting right on, and with-it-ness chugging right along, aye, aye.” Of Spike, Willow asked, “Dawn, right?”  
  
“Yeah. Healing spell, it was. Never should have done it. Stupid bint.” Recollecting that made Spike feel awful, since the spell had been done for him. All naïve good intentions and him not in a position at the time to know or stop it.  
  
“Right, then. Stupid bint Dawn does the spell and wackiness ensues, to the tune of point 8 on the Richter scale or about 20 megaton, depending on which analogy you prefer. That kind of semi-controlled ginormous Natural magic does have the effect of calling attention to itself. Bumps and eeks and swingy meter dials all across the magical-aetheric bandwidth. I think one of two things happened. ONE, Dawn calls attention to herself and gets recalled to the Big Time, resolving the dilemma of the Curious Adventure of the Two Summerses. Or TWO, weeks of exposure to the magical basement flux, that I just damped down yesterday, you’re all very welcome, finally trigger the Dawn’s self-destruct, or as it might scientifically be termed, her _poof_ function. As in, earlier this evening. So whether she in effect burned out all her circuits, a la the Buffybot, and went _poof,_ or Something came and folded her into teeny tiny origami until she vanished into her own navel, _poof,_ the result’s the same: reversion to previous state, shiny sparky ball of green energy thing, and no more pitter patter of tiny Dawn feet at Casa Summers. And the matrix goes, and everybody forgets, the brain wipers do their thing, and all’s well except for stubborn Spike pinning down the last corner. End of theory.”  
  
Spike reached and removed Willow’s half empty espresso cup from under her spoon and pushed his half full glass of Jim Beam into its place. Thought she needed settling down. Willow looked surprised and put-out. Spike just stared at her yellow-eyed, having had about all the hearty, heartless perkiness he felt like taking.  
  
“Overcaffeinated?” Willow asked of nobody in particular, wondering what she was guilty of.  
  
Spike reminded himself that the witch had come out at two in the morning to help him, and maybe he owed her some courtesy. Or something. “How d’you think you’d feel if I started talkin’ about Tara going _poof._ ”  
  
Willow’s face fell. “Oh. But, I mean, you weren’t, like, with this Dawn-- _were_ you?” The end of that was a strangled squeak.  
  
“Please,” Giles groaned, face propped on his hand.  
  
“You’re not makin’ things better, Red. Leave it that Dawn is mine. And I want her back. Tell me how I can go about doing that.”  
  
Willow shrugged. “Don’t have the foggiest. Sorry. One theory, that’s all I got.”  
  
Spike did not pull her face off. Thought about it. Didn’t do it. Might need her later.  
  
“Think about it some more, then. When you’re rested. I’ll come by tomorrow and maybe you’ll have thought of something by then.” Spike rose and reversed the chair. As an afterthought, he added, “Obliged for the charm.”  
  
**********  
  
Now that he knew, Dawn’s absence was enormous to him. When his shift was over, he wandered on back to Casa Spike and did the usual things but all was transformed by the not-Dawnness of it. Glanced at the bushel of dowels without the heart to touch it, on the porch. Reached down  
the tribute bottle Mike had given him and got outside as much of it as he could and still move, without Dawn to steer him or make him mind. Children, they knew he was _off_ , likely no missing it, but no use trying to explain to them so he just kept still, shut off, silent in all the not-Dawnness everywhere around.  
  
Got out some money and sent Vi off to the market for a couple bottles of vinegar, he’d made his mind up about that, all the pieces in place and just the doing remaining, so he didn’t have to think about it to take a towel and make a sort of compress for around his left arm, hand to shoulder, and pour vinegar on it every hour or so. Begged a thin neck chain from Amanda and fastened the memory charm to it so he couldn’t lose it from a pocket getting his cigarettes out or some such. Taking out a cigarette, looking at it, putting it back like he’d been doing since she’d been gone, even before he knew, didn’t know how it connected but it seemed to and he obedient to it and unquestioning. Just not the thing to do somehow.  
  
Tried to tell the children gathered all around him on the grass and the porch the story of him and Dru and Angelus and the Judge, the Slayer and the marvelous rocket launcher in the mall, everything busted up so grand, everybody diving for the floor and Angelus so furious to get his hair mussed and nobody even laughing at that part, not even a smile. Must have lost his touch altogether.  
  
So he told them instead the tale of the young princess made all out of lightnings and lightning-bugs who came to visit at this terrible little village at the very edge of the kingdom, not even a proper castle, only hovels with rats and not enough porridge, right at the edge beyond which all the maps had _Heere Ther Bee Monsters_ written in red ink with lots of exclamation points, and how she went walking in the woods one evening, wasn’t supposed to but nobody could tell her different, she’d just flip her hair and roll her eyes, like she did, and how in the long shadows just before full night she came upon a monster and it was all fierce and growly with these enormous teeth, like, and she wasn’t the least afraid, she never was, but touched it on the head and her magic was such that it went all peaceable to her, and loved her, and went everyplace with her and kept all the other monsters away, and was her own personal monster all her days and his. He supposed that shouldn’t be a sad story but it was, but anyway the children seemed to like it better than that other, so that was all right.  
  
And the stink of the vinegar wasn’t so bad once you got used to it because he’d learned from when Angelus got himself done in Marseilles, all four of them drunk for a month, wonderful times, and that was how you had to do it, otherwise the marks wouldn’t take or last. The appointment the minion had made for him was ten o’clock, so he asked Amanda please to remind him so he wouldn’t miss the time when the shadows fell right for him to reach the sewer lid and down.  
  
Amanda and Kim pestered to come along, but they didn’t know how to do that properly and stayed when he told them to. He’d known the sewers and the tunnels and the caves now for years and years, hardly needed more than smell to steer him. He supposed he could have required the bloke to come to him at Willy’s, do it there, but it all had to be done right, respectful like, and that meant he had to do it humble and pay for it and all, which was more than Angelus had done, ate the chap afterward and took the money back and more besides, but that had been different. Different times. Different times. Spike didn’t want there to be any least part of it that would shame him afterward, what with the soul being the mischancy, particular thing it was: you never knew what it might take exception to.  
  
He’d written it down on a paper, all the words correct from memory, what was to be nailed into his arm in green ink, very small nails, barely stung and wouldn’t have mattered if it was worse because this was the right thing to do now and he’d made up his mind to it anyway.  
  
It was drawn first in pen to match the paper, spiraling around his left hand and arm from knuckles to shoulder, all the letters and words spaced out proper to reach until he was satisfied because after all it was going to be there forever and therefore had to be done the first and only time right or it would be wrong forever and that wouldn’t have done. All plain script, nothing curly or pseudo-Tolkien-fucking-Elvish with umlauts and descenders, not if it was to last and he live with it that way for always.  
  
And then the green ink and the tiny nails poking it in, that was the final part he could sleep through, having set it up all proper to begin with. And when he woke to late afternoon sun out past the front window, still plenty of time to hit the Magic Box before closing, it was there, and right, just the way he’d seen it in his mind, green words against the hard chalk white of his arm; and a couple more days of vinegar would keep it from healing away to nothing, the way everything else did on a vampire. Make it last, never lose it again, not never.  
  
Anyway tats were proper for a vampire or Angelus wouldn’t have had himself done though in a shy place, back of his shoulder, not proud and showing plain on an arm.  
  
The words that took up the back of his hand were: _So Dawn_. The name there, not to be washed off, worn off, or ever again forgotten. And the unfitting capital to make him know it was more than a word--a name--if ever he started to lose it again.  
  
The verses spiraled up, the whole length of his arm:  
  
_So Dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay._


	4. Section 1: Stirrings — Nothing Gold Can Stay

Spike went into the Magic Box through the training annex, easing quietly into the store in case there might be customers and Anya busy with them. Would have put her in a real foul mood to be interrupted with customers, who might then not buy anything and all his fault.  
  
And sure enough there were customers, couple of children, boy and a girl, seventeen, maybe, trying to decide about candles but mostly scared about doing what they looked to be thinking about, shy side glances and desperate rictus smiles with panicked eyes, because they were scared mostly and hopeful a little, and Spike let them be because he knew how that felt, well enough.  
  
Though he hadn’t made the slightest bit of noise, standing quiet by the shut door and only watching, Anya knew right off he was there, swinging around and coming quick back toward him, all frowning and concerned so he couldn’t look at her and keep his mind clear for what he had to talk to her about.  
  
Anya fussed back and forth and around, halfway to grabbing at him and then yanking her hands back like he was red hot and she daren’t touch him, which was about the truth, Anya understood about such things, which was why it’d gone the way it had between them that one time. If there was one thing Anya understood, it was sorrow. She could sniff it out from miles away and had, in her Vengeance demon days.  
  
He turned away to the wall. “Just let me be, Anya. Let me be awhile, go tend to your customers.”  
  
“Oh, piffle. Candles. Who cares about them? Three dollars, tops. What on earth’s the matter? I’ve been picking it up all day, figured it was none of my concern, being human now, more or less, but I had no idea it was you!” When Spike only shook his head and wouldn’t answer her, Anya shooed at him and told him to go on in back. “Like I said, three dollars, tops. I’ll make them buy something and then get rid of them and close up, it’s practically 4:30 anyway, and how much business is that to lose? Go ahead, I’ll be right back.”  
  
Spike took a heavy, sprawled seat on the back bench, the training room very familiar to him from sessions with the Slayer and lately some of the SITs, for workouts that needed both more space and better padding for the falls and rolls than was available anyplace else. By the time Anya came bustling back he had himself a bit more in hand and figured he was fit to talk.  
  
Sitting tight against him, Anya asked at once, “Who’s died? Not Buffy, I would have heard about that, I’d have had Xander in here instead of you wanting to weep on my shoulder, not that I’d let him. But of course you can if you want to, I didn’t mean you couldn’t, and why do you smell like sauerkraut? That’s an odd choice for perfume, though if someone likes it I have no objection, it’s certainly distinctive. And what have you done to your arm? Let me see!”  
  
Spike held the arm out, and Anya found it a little awkward to read her way around but got there in the end, she always did.  
  
“Well, isn’t that nice! Robert Frost, isn’t it? What’s the occasion, besides being drunk?”  
  
“Dawn. She’s gone.”  
  
“That’s why it starts out that way, with the capital D. Of course. Should I know Dawn?”  
  
“You might, if you put your mind to it. Since you’re a demon. Or were,” Spike amended, respecting her fiction. “Buffy’s little sis, about so high. He marked a line at the bridge of his nose. “Just starting at the High School. In and out of here nearly every afternoon, some small shoplifting a few times--”  
  
“Yes, of course! And she was paying me back in labor and I had to watch her near the jewelry, just in case.” Anya frowned perplexedly. “That was so hard to remember!”  
  
“They got somebody doin’ that, it seems.”  
  
“That explains it, then. Did she die of something contagious? Not as if you’re any problem, but I should know in case Xander wants to make up again. That would be the first time this week but it’s only Monday and a girl can’t be too careful, humans are so unsanitary, always catching things.” After that burst Anya waited, poised and attentive, for his answer.  
  
“Didn’t die, exactly. At least I don’t think so. Just…vanished.”  
  
“Dissolved into constituent elements. You don’t see much of that anymore. Probably her keyness in some fashion. How terrible for you! She was so attached to you! Could hardly drive her away with a stick, or is that inappropriate humor? It’s so hard to tell with vampires, they sometimes have such an odd sense of what’s amusing. Probably from being technically dead. Gives a different perspective, I’d imagine. Since most humor depends on incongruities and primal fears, if you’re already dead, even technically, there’s the big one gone already, and what you consider incongruous undergoes drastic changes.”  
  
“No, that’s fine. None of the rest remember, except Buffy, a little. There for a second, when she was still half asleep. So your jokes are no worse than Willow thinking I’d been fucking the child. Didn’t like that much.”  
  
“Did she? Really? Oh, that’s too gross. You weren’t, were you? That’s certainly not the impression I ever got.”  
  
“No. Just loved her, is all.”  
  
“Not the same thing, I understand perfectly. Though it’s so hard to get humans to make that distinction. Though I’m of course human now, and I make that distinction perfectly well. So what did you do to her? Willow, I mean.”  
  
“Nothing to speak of. She wasn’t to know. They’ve all forgot. Red kept calling her ‘the Dawn,’ like she was some sort of a ‘bot.”  
  
“You should have done something to her,” Anya advised seriously. “I’m sure it would have made you feel much better.”  
  
“Yeah, maybe. For the two seconds before she set me afire.”  
  
Anya went into gales of laughter and Spike found himself inclined to smile in spite of everything. He should have known Anya would cheer him up. The rest, they didn’t appreciate her. Particularly Harris. Took another demon to appreciate her properly and they both knew it but didn’t say anything about it much anymore, except for that one time and there’d been good reasons for that, and those reasons weren’t so anymore, so they were just good friends no matter what Harris thought.  
  
When she was through laughing, Anya put on her worried/concerned face again, that set the lines between her eyebrows and her mouth all pursed up tight. “The soul. Does that make it worse?”  
  
“Dunno why not, it ruins everything else.”  
  
Anya thought that was hilarious too. Maybe it was. He didn’t trust himself to judge at the moment.  
  
“Anya. I want to get her back: Dawn. Got no wishes coming that I know of and they come back to bite you in the ass anyway so that’s not a thing I’d do. Anything you can think of that would let me do that?”  
  
Anya frowned, her eyes darting uncomfortably around. “I’m a terrible hostess, I haven’t offered you anything to drink! I know: I used to have a bottle of peach schnapps--”  
  
Spike caught her wrist before she’d quite dashed off to fetch it. Pulled up short, Anya spun around and the lines were back between her eyes. She and Spike looked at each other for a minute or so. Talking without saying anything. Communicating all the same. Sympathy and discomfort and appeal and connection and a painful understanding that nothing was being said because there was nothing to say. Spike let her wrist go.  
  
“Anya, there’s got to be something.”  
  
“Spike, you’re not nearly drunk enough for me to discuss this with you. Let me get you something--”  
  
Spike just tipped his head and kept looking at her. She made a huge, frustrated frown and dumped herself back on the bench, then smacked her fists hard down on her knees. “If she actually were dead, there are of course lots of things that could be done. Ghost, zombification, something elaborate with blood sacrifice like Buffy got, not that it wasn’t very tasteful, the demon bikers weren’t Willow’s fault after all, although it certainly was an awkward coincidence and the Magic Box wasn’t even touched, which of course is the important thing. I still have awful dreams about those bikers. I dream they’re getting into the good crystals. Impossible to mend once they’re broken, the harmonics are all wrong. But you don’t care about any of that, I’m sorry.” Anya patted his hand absently and quite hard. “But I don’t think you understand the problem. Maybe if I explained. It’s as though you’d thrown a bucket of water into the ocean. Not you personally: anyone. But you, you personally, now want exactly the same water back that was in the bucket to begin with. Do you see, or should I try a different analogy with seagulls or wire clothes hangers?”  
  
Spike was concentrating because if you could get through the excess verbiage, generally Anya did make sense. And she was, after all, over a thousand years old. Seen a lot, over that time. Not much she didn’t know about--more, generally, than you actually wanted to hear, but everybody had some quirk or another. It wasn’t like being around the children, who mostly made him feel older than dirt. A vampire’s span hardly ever could begin to compare to that of a Vengeance demon, one of the longest-lived of the mixed demon races. Probably because they took such satisfaction in their work.  
  
“I got the bucket,” he said. “Got the water in the bucket, that’s Dawn herself. So what’s the ocean, then?”  
  
“Why, the Powers That Be. I thought everybody knew that. What are you going to make a dimensional key from except what formed the dimensions themselves in the first place? Dimensionality is one of the Powers That Be. A fraction of that Power was sequestered--would that be the right word, ‘sequestered’? Maybe ‘separated,’ except that doesn’t carry the idea of ‘hidden.’ All right, I’ll try secreted, only that sounds glandular.”  
  
“‘Sequestered’ will do fine, pet. The rest, we can take as given.”  
  
“All right, if you’re sure,” Anya responded dubiously. “Anyway, a fraction was sequestered, put down here and hidden because after all, this is such a nothing backwater--”  
  
“Sunnydale?”  
  
“This whole planet and most of this reality, though it has its nice points here and there. But you have to look for them, they’re at best an acquired taste, so what better place to hide something, since nobody would bother to look? Except Glory, and who’s she? Minor Hellgod with the fashion sense of Mae West. Or…or Anita Ekberg, that’s another one. And who’s the new one? I have it just on the tip of my mind, married that rich old guy and then orgasmed him to death. Oh, you have to know what I mean!” She thumped Spike hard several times on the tatted arm, which did sting a bit and he removed it carefully, so as not to offend her.  
  
“What, Anna Nicole?”  
  
“Yes! I’m ashamed to have a name even close to hers, and I’ve had it longer so it’s entirely the fault of her parents.”  
  
“Imagine you’re right about that. Now how would a chap make contact with the Powers That Be, or that one in particular? To hear him tell it, Peaches does it every day and twice on Tuesdays, so how hard can it be?”  
  
Anya shook her head vehemently, making her hair all fluff out in a way that was more pretty than not. “You don’t want to do that, Spike. You really don’t.”  
  
“Now, Anya--”  
  
“You heard me say that vampires have a peculiar sense of humor? Try the Powers if you want the truly bizarre. There was a story going around Arashmahar once about an entire solar system that was crisped for a punchline by one of the Powers. And that they’re still laughing about it, as they get the point. One by one. Every thousand years or so. Sometimes, apparently, it takes awhile.  
  
“It’s one thing when they contact you, which would account for Angel’s situation. It’s quite another to contact them uninvited. Totally utterly different. And fatal is the best that could happen. Trust me: you do NOT want to bring yourself to their notice. Will you please trust me about this? You’re a mere child, and I’m trying to warn you away from a very hot iron. As in ironing.” She mimed it. “Or even a hot poker, everybody’s seen those. I am giving you very good, very important advice here. And you’re not going to take it, are you.”  
  
“Never have before,” said Spike, feeling a kind of calm, almost lazy, resignation. “So it’s best to continue how you started out.”  
  
“Well, there’s that, and I’m sure it’s important, but I just can’t feel it at the moment. I know: I’ll tell Buffy,” Anya announced triumphantly. “And she won’t let you!”  
  
“Now, Anya. Coming between an honest vampire and his Slayer, that could be disruptive, now couldn’t it. And I always thought you tried not to do that, break couples up an’ all. Because of the whole vengeance thing. Now isn’t that so.”  
  
“Yes. Drat! Drat fudge shit. Excuse me, but I’m very vexed. All right, but you have to promise to tell Buffy yourself, then, before you do anything rash.”  
  
Spike thought about it. Thought about how often Buffy had told him before she did anything rash. Which would be zero. In fact, he was generally the last to find out and had to do the clean-up. Well, maybe one: Glory’s tower, he’d known about that beforehand. So that would make once. But these were special circumstances, and Dawn after all was her sister, even if made up out of dimensional stuff and even though Buffy couldn’t precisely remember her at the moment. Family was important, regardless. So maybe Anya was right. Maybe he should. “All right. I promise.”  
  
Anya leaped up, dashed a few paces, then spun around. “You _do_ know how to use a focusing crystal, don’t you?”  
  
Spike nodded slowly several times.  
  
“I’ve got one put by, I didn’t expect there to be any commercial demand for it, most people have more sense. A collector’s item. It came in by mistake with a shipment of ordinary scrying crystals, but it’s rare and therefore worth a great deal of money if I were ever to find the right buyer. And we’d have to make arrangements for how you were going to pay me for it. But…if you get crisped, you’re not going to pay me, and Buffy certainly wouldn’t hold herself responsible for your debts, it’s not as if you were legally married, after all. Or are you? No, you couldn’t be because although Buffy and I aren’t particularly close at the moment since she tried to kill me, I can’t imagine not being invited to your wedding, assuming you’d had one, which of course I’m now certain that you didn’t. Since I wasn’t invited. Didn’t even help with the planning. So that’s my price. In the unlikely event that you survive this, when you and Buffy decide to do the decent thing, since she’s human or practically and that’s what humans _do_ , get married, that is--all the magazines say so, to say nothing of the thousands of Harlequin romances--I get to make _all_ the arrangements. All of them. Every one. No exceptions.”  
  
“Now, I’d have to ask Buffy about that. But supposing she has no objections and hasn’t made other plans herself, then yes, I’ll promise you that.”  
  
Anya beamed and then finished running off to get the crystal.  
  
Spike had been sure he could depend on Anya to come up with something.  
  
**********  
  
Spike had promised in all good faith, and had meant to do what he’d promised: talk to Buffy before doing anything toward contacting the Powers That Be…one of which was apparently (partly) Dawn. So it was completely involuntary and unintentional on his part that when he left the Magic Box by the back door, considering the faceted softball-sized crystal in his hand and holding it because it was too large for any pocket, he was blindsided by an angle of light and realized where he was. It was _that_ alley. From what he thought of as “the Never dream.” The light falling just so, and the walls where the walls were, and the places where the shadows slanted down all corresponding, dark and bright, everything he saw all corresponding in every least detail. It seemed to get larger and larger before him as though it was moving toward him although he wasn’t moving at all, gone completely blank with astonishment and recognition and terror that this should be the place after all, the very one.  
  
The one thought that came to him was that it had been Dawn all along and he hadn’t known. Only that it was coming and he was like not to survive it and that had been all right because he’d thought he’d have a chance first to put himself between, take the death himself and make it leave his girls be, but there’d been no chance and he hadn’t even known she was gone for such a time, hours, and it’d been Dawn all along.  
  
And just as he got that far in understanding it, it was just as though it was all beginning afresh, the first instant of recognition and shock, deeper and higher and bigger and moving in faster, and then again, and again, and again. It felt like getting hit, it felt like getting destroyed, hammered and beaten smaller and smaller until finally there was no space at all left to be in. And then it stopped. Or he did, he had no way of distinguishing.  
  
And nothing at all happened for what seemed like a very long time.  
  
_Something set in amber,_ the thought came. And stayed awhile. Long or short, no way of telling. Anyway gone eventually.  
  
Trapped inside his skull. Didn’t know if that was a thought or not. Just something there, some way, that he was aware of. And after a time no longer aware of it or it was gone, no difference.  
  
He’d been moderately drunk but wasn’t now. Not a bit. This was what real meant. No question of it, not an instant, supposing he’d know the difference between an instant and anything else.  
  
Then after the longest while of all, the least touch of sensation. His left arm. Couldn’t name it any particular sensation except it got stronger, awareness strengthening into pain and then past that, way past that, a very long time of that. And then suddenly gone. No kind of sensation at all.  
  
_You have no claim on us._  
  
Neither sound nor thought, just something that was present and he was aware of it. It was there a very long time, and he aware of it, and that’s all there was.  
  
_I do._ He’d done that. He didn’t know how or what it was, but he knew it was his and he’d done it.  
  
_No claim._  
  
_If I have no claim, why bother to tell me so?_  
  
That was even better. That was a place he could stand and know himself apart from all the everything else. It was an attitude, and it was his. It was defiance and argument and it wasn’t nothing because it was still there, hadn’t been answered or refuted or simply made not to be.  
  
Something forming: so now there was sight and some least sense of near and far. Medium distance because it could have been farther, but not much. Something filmy and gauzy and like a skull. And suddenly, instantly, all complete. Dawn’s face, if she was dead. And then under and around the face, the rest of her, thrown in almost contemptuously to complete her, head to toe, be done with it.  
  
He made no comment, but he’d seen masks before and wasn’t impressed, and maybe that was a comment in spite of him.  
  
The eyes opened and the mouth moved like inferior animatronics. The bad illusion of life without any actual life and so as fake as it could possibly be. Not-Dawn said, “You don’t want this.”  
  
And apparently the Whatever was fair: if not-Dawn could form actual words, then he was allowed to as well. Otherwise, wasn’t much point to it, actually.  
  
“No: because it’s not her.”  
  
So the not-Dawn was made _exactly_ like her: each least thing he questioned or found fault with changed until he didn’t, until he could see nothing except what was exactly like Dawn. And he hoped for a second it might actually be--  
  
He thought, _This is what will probably get me killed._ And he figured Whatever knew he was thinking that but no help for it, it was important to him to know it.  
  
So whatever passed for saying, he said, “I’m a vampire. I can’t smell her or hear her or touch her. She has no weight, no actual substance. She has no heartbeat or breath or blood. Nothing at all of what a girl should have inside her. I can’t feel her breath. She doesn’t look at me as Dawn looks at me. This is not who she is. This is not Dawn.”  
  
If he’d hoped to dicker his way to further and closer approximations, he was disappointed: the whole everything was gone and there was nothing again. Nothing at all. He began to suspect the Whatever was beginning to get peeved.  
  
He often had that effect.  
  
_Spike, you should go home._  
  
It didn’t sound at all, much less sound right. All the same, he knew beyond question: Dawn. Herself. Not angry with him. Only sad.  
  
A very large feeling seized him. As large as her absence had been. There was nothing else he could be aware of; and that continued.  
  
_I know. I know why you did this._  
  
With that soft comment came the least fingertip touch to the back of his left hand, which was there because she’d touched it. And stayed.  
  
The feeling didn’t change or diminish. But something, not his choice, moved it a little away, so there was a little away. Words were possible again.  
  
“Wanted to do it right for you. Wanted that real hard.”  
  
_I know. But you’re bothering the rest of Us._  
  
“Am I bothering you?”  
  
_No. Yes. I’m here because you’re bothering Us. We want to you stop. They will stop you if you don’t stop yourself._  
  
“You stop me then, if you want to.”  
  
_No. I don’t want to. They do. The rest of Us. I am only part. Very small. Almost nothing._  
  
There was no way he could respond to that. Only the feeling: off to the side and very large. As she was to him.  
  
_Some of what you think of as mine isn’t. It was taken, to be me. To make me. From Buffy-for-herself._  
  
Truly Dawn. It was truly her. “Yes, Bit.”  
  
_Because I trust, she does not. She doesn’t cry when you hurt because I cry. Buffy-for-herself fears all because I fear none. You’re not first because that was given to me for mine. It was for Buffy, to claim her with, so she would protect me. But I claimed you with it too because you were there and it wasn’t planned, for it to be so. You weren’t part of what was planned for, but you were there all the same. After the tower. You know how it was then. All these things that were taken have been returned. They should not be taken again, Spike. They are hers. I love you but I’m no one. Almost nothing. And when you go I will be nothing again. Scattered. And that’s as it should be. And should have been. But she was gone, there was no way to return what I’d been given, and I would not go and leave you so. With nothing at all. I didn’t know that was why I stayed, but I know now. She should be whole. And you should be whole. And not divided. You’re not mine to keep. Once, but not now. May I take something from you? For a keepsake?_  
  
“Whatever you say, Bit.”  
  
_I have taken it, and I don’t think it’s a thing you’ll miss. I wouldn’t do that._  
  
Nothing possible. Only the feeling.  
  
_Do you want to forget?_  
  
“No, Bit.”  
  
The touch to his hand, to her name there. Stronger. _Then you won’t. Goodbye, Spike._  
  
And he was sitting on a crate in an alley in a certain slant of light. And he didn’t know what to do with his hands.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**Nothing Gold Can Stay**  
  
  
Nature's first green is gold,  
Her hardest hue to hold.  
Her early leaf's a flower;  
But only so an hour.  
Then leaf subsides to leaf.  
So Eden sank to grief,  
So dawn goes down to day.  
Nothing gold can stay.  
  
\--Robert Frost


	5. Section 2: Approaches — Vampires by Moonlight

Buffy figured it was one of the perverse laws of relationships that when one partner warmed up, the other cooled down; when one came on, the other started backing off.  
  
The fact was, despite everything, she didn’t remember feeling this good since practically the great mayor/snake/explosion that had destroyed the previous incarnation of the high school.  
  
Willow’s covert sullenness, that usually made everything awkward and hesitant, didn’t prevent Buffy from dragging her out for shopping and lattes, even if the shopping was only thrift stores. Boutiquing could be fun because it was like scavenging: you never knew what you might find and you might even be able to afford it.  
  
When Xander started his utterly predictable grouching and ranting about Spike’s presence in the same cosmos as himself, Buffy had no problem telling him to find somebody his own age to pick on because bad-mouthing old people like Spike was just mean. Xander looked at her funny but dutifully came up with fresh candidates to snipe at.  
  
Dealing with her friends in a direct, straightforward manner was so simple, and so plainly necessary, that Buffy couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t done it long ago instead of agonizing endlessly over what they might think of her if they knew any of her terrible disgusting awful secrets. Like having a very, very old boyfriend who was absolutely the hottest item she expected she’d ever see, and lucky to have him, and what had all the fuss been about anyway?  
  
Not that Spike was truly old, not inside, or outside either for that matter, but it was hard to argue that somebody whose combined age was something like 150 wasn’t due some senior points here and there. Buffy told Spike about it and he looked at her funny too.  
  
Too bad. He’d get over it.  
  
For no particular reason Buffy knew, Spike had become fascinating to watch and fun to tease. She began to read his body language automatically, without even thinking about it. She heard words in his silences and answered accordingly, and got searching, pensive looks from him in response. She felt good. She felt happy and confident, with energy to spare, and what could be wrong with that?  
  
Apparently something was, though, because Spike’s bounding, headlong energy, that generally required him to keep the brakes on pretty much 24/7 and drink himself unconscious several times a week just to slow down to the speeds normal people lived at, had dropped away to nearly nothing. Buffy wondered if there could be such a thing as an energy vampire and, if so, she’d somehow been turned without knowing it. There was no real reason to think her increase in vitality was at his expense, but it had to be coming from somewhere and the reverse ratio of rise to fall was pretty conspicuous.  
  
And it was as if he wasn’t sure how to behave around her anymore. Way backed off, shy, diffident, vaguely hopeful, as if he was continually worried about saying or doing the wrong thing and getting hammered for it, which was just dumb after all this while and besides she didn’t do the dumb stuff anymore and therefore his worrying about it, if that’s what it was, was really peculiar. And also very un-Spikelike.  
  
But even though she tickled him into near hysterics one night, he wouldn’t admit what was wrong or even that anything was, when that was obviously untrue. He didn’t even pitch a fit when accused of brooding.  
  
Strangest of all, though, was the flatlining of whatever passed, in vampires, for libido. Since vamps didn’t have much going by the way of hobbies or outside interests, sex took up the slack in terms of what to do with your day, or night, or unlife, or anytime you weren’t actively hunting or feeding or sleeping. Since vamps didn’t actually need much sleep, and feeding took, what: maybe fifteen minutes a day?--no cooking or chewing involved, after all: speeded things right up--a whole lot of quality time was open for fooling around. So when the question was sex, the answer was always _Yes_ , assuming they bothered to answer at all and didn’t go straight for the clinch. Always time enough for that, and repeats, and dares, and long elaborate games involving the creative use of various food and non-food items. Sex was play and conversation and provocation and consolation and sometimes even battle: every other kind of relatedness could be and was subsumed into sex with a single-minded intensity Buffy had never found in any of her human lovers. Which, she suspected, was one reason she really, really preferred vamps in bed.  
  
They didn’t get bored and were never boring. They didn’t do the deed and then roll over and sleep when you were still highly interested. They didn’t beg off for headaches. With a singular although spectacular exception, they always respected you in the morning and were just as interested as the night before, or even more so since they weren’t going anyplace until nightfall. Four or five screaming redhot orgasms barely counted as foreplay. And without getting into the gross details, particular times of the month only made things hotter and more intense all around.  
  
Sex was something vamps tended to be passionate about. Extremely.  
  
Of course almost everything she knew about that she’d learned from Spike, so maybe she was overgeneralizing. Maybe he was as exceptional in that way as in liking highly spiced human food and hot sauce in his warmed-up pigs’ blood, which no other vamps seemed to have the least inclination for, going by the non-menus at the demon bars. Maybe the demon average was something closer to Clem, the only actual friend of Spike’s Buffy knew of, who didn’t exactly seem wild monkey sex material and displayed all the sexual aggressiveness of Captain Kangaroo.  
  
Even in the bad old days, the dumb stuff days, sex between her and Spike had been pretty equal opportunity. If the opportunity offered and sometimes when it didn’t, either of them was apt to do the initial pouncing. Now, with a fair amount of opportunity and even inclination, Spike had to be courted, practically seduced, and continually reassured. Either she pounced or nothing happened. And sometimes even when she did: he might duck away, slide away, with unexplained pressing business elsewhere. His diffidence and uncertainty, newly notable in ordinary contact, came into full bloom in bed. The normal ferocity and aggressiveness, that Buffy more liked than not, clear gone. And what she felt, for no reason she could name, as a terrible unchanging sadness underneath.  
  
Sure, they were probably all gonna die when the Hellmouth started spewing Turok-han. But that was no reason to get all depressed in the meantime.  
  
She overheard, one evening, Spike in the front hall trying to sweet-talk Xander into giving him a ride down to L.A. to collect the motorcycle he’d left there, outbound for Africa, and butted in to offer the SUV and her company instead.  
  
A head tilt and a glance. “Wouldn’t want to put you out, Slayer.”  
  
“Slayer’s not going. Slayer never has any fun: it’s in the manual, just ask Giles. This is a Buffy offer. Come on: catch a movie or something while we’re there,” Buffy proposed, grabbing the non-tatted arm and leaning close, grinning in his face.  
  
When it appeared that needed thinking about, she wheedled, “You can drive.”  
  
Slow, small smile. “All right. Might actually make it, in that case. When?”  
  
“Well, how about like _now?”_  
  
“But…there’s patrol, innit?”  
  
“Xander can take it. Can’t you, Xander? Surrounded by all that luscious girlflesh you can’t have? How are you feeling about torture tonight, Xander?”  
  
Xander rubbed his hands together. “Pretty sanguine, actually. Gives me a chance to try out those inline skates.”  
  
Buffy gave him the required skeptical look. “You have inline skates?”  
  
“No, I have an excellent reason to get some. And some rope. And reins. A whip. Maybe train for the Iditerod.”  
  
“Sure, you do that, except no whining about the bruises when the SITs find out you regard them as bitches. Of the canine variety.”  
  
“Deal,” agreed Xander cheerfully. “I’ll have Andrew take pictures, make the cover of the National Enquirer right next to the Satan image on the moon and the world’s most obese kitty-cat.”  
  
“Meow,” said Buffy, then told Spike, “See? All set. You ready?”  
  
More thought required. “Maybe stop at Willy’s a few minutes?”  
  
“Sure, no problemo. But this isn’t a Willy’s night, is it?”  
  
“No. Just something to catch up. If that’s all right.”  
  
Buffy faked a frown. “I don’t know, I’ll have to give that some serious consideration. OK. Serious consideration over.”  
  
One of those searching looks, as if she’d caught him wrong-footed and dumped him in the training room, and he wasn’t quite sure if she was mad or not, whether he ought to stay down, not risk either of them losing their temper and the fight going real. Which had happened, but surely not lately.  
  
She asked, “You want to get some tapes or something?”  
  
“No, radio’s fine. Keys by the phone?”  
  
“As ever.”  
  
Perhaps twenty minutes later, sitting in the SUV in Willy’s parking strip, Buffy began tapping her fingers on the dash. She’d figured Spike was just stopping by for drinking supplies, but that certainly didn’t take ten minutes. He’d left the motor running, though. After another round of tapping, Buffy switched the engine off, stuck the keys in her pocket, and went in search of him. A quick scan of the bar’s patrons didn’t turn him up, but she spotted one of his minions clearing a table: the nervous one that always seemed to suspect she was just itching to stake him, which was really excessive because Spike’s minions were perfectly harmless. He seemed to think Buffy’s asking about Spike’s whereabouts was a trick question and guessing would therefore be suicidal. Buffy turned away, annoyed, deciding to check out the side of the lot.  
  
She saw two guys sitting on their heels in conversation, and although the light wasn’t that great past the building’s corner, Spike’s bone-white hair was unmistakable. As Buffy approached, both looked up: golden-eyed and game-faced. Startled, Buffy halted, and the vamp that wasn’t Spike rose with more an air of calm politeness than alarm: the way any guy might stand up when a lady entered a room. So it also seemed politeness that his features flowed and smoothed before he met her eyes.  
  
Standing too, Spike apparently felt an introduction was called for: “Slayer, Mike. Michael, this is the Slayer.”  
  
The vampire, Mike, gave her a composed nod. With his broad forehead and wide-set light eyes, he reminded Buffy vaguely of Riley Finn. Broader and slightly taller than Spike, he appeared to have been turned in his early thirties, a little older than Spike’s apparent age, which could mean anything.  
  
If you didn’t count Dracula, who’d introduced himself, Buffy had never been introduced to a vampire before and felt at a complete loss how to respond.  
  
Quite casually and still game-faced, Spike said to the other vampire, “So we’ll settle up about this tomorrow, all right? Got someplace to be at the moment.”  
  
“All right. See you then. Slayer.” With another nod to her, Mike turned and started away. As Spike headed back toward the van, Buffy fell in alongside, checking over her shoulder twice to make sure the strange vamp wasn’t stalking them.  
  
“Friend of yours?” she found herself asking, more nervously than she’d intended.  
  
“Just somebody I know. One of the cousins, is all. No need to worry about him, long as I’m with you. And I believe he might actually have the sense to stay clear of you otherwise, though you never know.”  
  
“But…who is he?”  
  
“Dunno all that much about him. Ex-merc, has some good weapons knowledge, contacts. Figure, myself, he’s one of those came down from the Wild Geese, along ago. Looks it, anyways. Chaps like that, they been turning up for a good few centuries now since Ireland couldn’t feed its own, the young boyos hiring out as muscle of one kind or another to wherever was hiring. Not all of ‘em vamps, of course.” Spike pulled open the van door and swung in behind the wheel. “You take the keys, pet?’  
  
Caught in a third backward glance, Buffy climbed in on the passenger side and passed over the keys.  
  
Starting the engine, then backing to turn, Spike remarked, “Put you in mind of that yob Finn, didn’t he.”  
  
Startled again, Buffy responded, “You read minds now?”  
  
“Just figured. All those boyos cut from pretty much the same cloth. Seen ‘em from Moscow to Lima. Michael, he’s not a bad sort, considering. Trying to live by rule, like what he used to know. Won’t work in the long run, it never does, but no use to tell him so. In the meantime, he’s a steady enough chap.”  
  
Buffy’s fingers flew to her temples. “Stop, stop. No, not the van, just the talk. One vamp I have to think of like a person is all I can handle. All right, two,” she added, obliged to think of and add Angel. “Three’s too many. Three does not compute.”  
  
“Have to know where the people leave off and the monsters begin,” Spike responded easily. “Only natural. I expect the monsters start anyplace south of Peaches, like you said. Not altogether sure where the line for me should fall, but that’s all right. I expect you’ll sort it out however seems best to you.”  
  
“The one I thought of first wasn’t Angel,” Buffy told him, a little stung he’d think otherwise. “It was you.”  
  
“All right,” Spike responded, still agreeable, watching the road.  
  
Buffy had the feeling she’d somehow committed an argument and then lost it, all without intending any such thing.  
  
Reaching the highway, Spike switched on the high beams, which brightened the dash lights as well. He was still in game face. Until then, Buffy hadn’t been sure.  
  
Buffy said, “How come?” and gestured when he glanced around at her.  
  
“See better this way, love.”  
  
“Then why not all the other times?”  
  
A shrug, a lift of the hand not holding the wheel. “Didn’t think of it, probably. If you’re expecting me to be consistent, you face sad disappointment.” Eyes still steady on the road ahead, Spike added, “Or maybe I figured then that it mattered, show you only what you’d be comfortable seeing.”  
  
That was blunter than she’d heard from him in some time, and blunter and more direct than she’d expected. “And now it doesn’t matter?”  
  
“Well, you seen my demon now enough times, I expect it’s no surprise.”  
  
All the same, he either shed the mask or resumed the other, whichever way he thought of it: as if the fact of her mentioning it constituted a request.  
  
Buffy didn’t think he was trying to be provoking or was deliberately misunderstanding her, which made it the more frustrating. They were simply consistently misreading each other’s signals. Or at least he was, hers.  
  
They came to the coast road and turned south. Doing maybe sixty. Poking along.  
  
Buffy finally had to say it: “Your virtue is astonishing. Under the speed limit, no liquor in the vehicle, no radio blasting away, not even smoking. What--”  
  
“Don’t have a driver’s license,” Spike offered, “if that makes you feel any better. Go ahead an’ get something on the radio, if you want.”  
  
“Spike--!” Buffy tried to think of a way to put it that (a) he couldn’t dodge and (b) wouldn’t constitute or provoke an outright confrontation. She finally said, “All right, let me predict: no matter which of the three thousand ways you’ve been weird lately I mention, you’re gonna tell me you’re off, expect me to agree, end of conversation. How about we skip that part, OK? Take that as given. OK, you’re off. _Why_ are you off? I really want an answer to that, Spike.” When she’d waited several minutes without getting any response, she blew it by breaking the silence first, trying to make a joke of it: “Is it blood poisoning from the tat? What?”  
  
“As good a reason as any.”  
  
Damn. She’d given him an out, and he’d taken it.  
  
Then, maybe because he was Spike, he surprised her. “I expect I’m like that Michael, in a way: tryin’ to suss it out by the rules. Rules I don’t feel anymore. Trying not to be a nuisance about it or put a foot too wrong, but maybe that’s not possible. Anyway, this is the best I got, so either it’s enough or it’s not. If you say it’s not, I dunno where I’m to go with it.”  
  
She slid over against him and put her arm through his non-tat one, lacing fingers into his fingers. Just as she’d suspected, all his muscles, everything in him, all locked, tight, and rigid. He wouldn’t clasp her hand, probably because there’d be fingers broken, hers or his or maybe both, if he did. But with probably the one grain of sense she’d had all night, Buffy didn’t remark on the obvious, didn’t say anything at all. Just leaned her head onto his shoulder and waited for whatever was next: for him to settle or not, or explain or not, leave the ball this time entirely in his court and see what happened.  
  
After maybe ten minutes he slowed and pulled off onto the margin. Turned off the headlights, set the drive in Park, and turned off the key. Rather than pull away, he said, “Gonna get out now.”  
  
“All right.” Buffy let him go, then opened her own door and down. She expected to find him pacing, but he’d only leaned back against the van near the front wheel well on her side. She mirrored his pose even to the folded arms, both of them looking outward.  
  
A car passed behind them and then gradually silence again. There was enough of a moon to distinguish sky from the land descending between this roadside and the unseen sea. Buffy thought she could hear it, far off; but maybe it was only wind.  
  
Spike said quietly, “I dunno if I can make you understand. Expect I shouldn’t try, won’t make things any better and will likely make them worse. But if you can’t be content if I don’t give account of myself, I’ll do as best I can to try.”  
  
“I’ll try really hard to listen,” Buffy said. “I truly, really want to understand.”  
  
“Let me think…. Well, to start with, it’s good you’re happier now. It just blazes off you. Anybody could see. An’ that’s yours and you deserve to have it. But what you don’t know is where that came from. The price of it. An’ I do, and I haven’t been able to get myself reconciled to it. Which is my problem, not yours, and I’ve tried as best I could to keep it away from you and manage on my own. But that’s throwing me off, and me being off, seems like that’s started to throw you off too. And I dunno what’s to be done, if this isn’t enough.”  
  
“I think,” said Buffy carefully, “Giles would now detect the absence of a noun. You’ve told me, except you haven’t told me. Could you go a step or two back, to where this actually makes sense?”  
  
“Dunno if it will, to you. Anyway. You recall that sister you had, except not really. Dawn.”  
  
“No,” Buffy said honestly.  
  
Spike laughed. Not a particularly good laugh. “Not surprising. Here.” He slipped a thin chain from around his neck and waited for her to bend her head so he could put it on her. A little dried-up twist of grass or something was pinned to it. “I don’t need it anymore, and when we’re done I’ll take it back if you want, since it’s only apt to make you sad to no purpose. All right, even though you don’t remember, bear with me here. For awhile, you had a sister. Five years younger than you, about. And her name was Dawn. An’ I loved you both very much, only different. But not one more, one less. She was taken, and sorted back into what she’d been before. Magic is as good a way to say as any, though it wasn’t that, not really…. And all of what was hers came back to you, because that was where it’d come from to begin with. And that’s as it should be. She told me so, and I got no argument. But the price of what you got back, that you’re so happy with now, is Dawn. An’ I’m not reconciled to it. There’s things I see in you now that are Dawn’s things, an’ it’s as if I think you stole ‘em. Know you didn’t, know that perfectly well. Doesn’t change anything. It’s as if it’s your fault she’s gone because you have the benefit of it, and I hold that against you. Angry with you sometimes on that account. ‘Tisn’t fair, but that’s the truth of it all the same. You give me time, and space, to be feeling toward you what I ought, maybe I will again. This isn’t something I’m doin’ on purpose or even believe is right. But it’s what is, and I’m doin’ with it the best I can. And likely this doesn’t make any sense to you whatever, because you got no memory of Dawn, like I have.”  
  
Buffy scuffed a foot back and forth on the gravel. “When my parents split up,” she said slowly, softly, feeling her way, “for a long time I was mad at my mom. Because obviously it had to be somebody’s fault my dad wasn’t with us anymore, and if it wasn’t her it had to be me, and I couldn’t have stood that. Really, really couldn’t. Especially since this whole Slayer business had just dropped onto me like the proverbial ton of bricks, and I was really scared I was such a freak that nobody would ever love me if they knew. So it absolutely positively couldn’t be me, see? Had to be mom. And I was so wretched to her for a long time, before and after she moved us to Sunnydale, I’m ashamed now even to think about it. Because of course I loved her. A lot. You know. But it took me a really long while to get past that. To set it aside. When I could, I did. But I had to wait until I could. Does that sound to you anything at all like what you’re trying to tell me?”  
  
His answer was to turn and take her in his arms, hard, head bent against hers. “Pretty much,” he responded hoarsely.  
  
Buffy said, “Then Dawn probably was a smarter person than me, because I understand that, and I don’t think I would have, before. If that’s something that came to me from her, I’m grateful and I’ll try to make the best use of it I can. I have too many problems admitting vampires are even people to speculate about their being traumatized or neurotic or anything like that. Don’t have to deal with that kind of stuff if all you’re gonna do is stake ‘em.” She mimed that: imaginary pointy stick, a thump against his chest. “Sort of like the Watchers’ Council and the Slayers. Very limited viewpoint. It’s easier that way--for them. Easier, slaying, if you don’t know they have names, much less know what those names are. If they’re not people. Sort of like butchering your pet pig…. Holden Webster…. And yet it has to be done.”  
  
“So it does.”  
  
Buffy tried to think how all that applied. Mike, that she’d just met, connected up to it. And of course Spike. And even the minion in the bar, who maybe wasn’t your basic upstanding example of vamphood, but had his ways and likely his own way of thinking. Clem. And of course Angel. “Maybe,” she said to Spike, “I have to give up the monsters altogether. There’s a war on, and they’re mostly the enemy. But it doesn’t help see things clearly, as they really are, to demonize them. Even when they’re demons.” That made her chuckle, and Spike pulled in a deep, sighing breath, so she’d gotten through to him at least that much. Let him ease off some of the tension and what she now knew to be rigid self-control like watching your feet, going downstairs, which almost guaranteed a stumble.  
  
Couldn’t do it by the rules: Spike was right. You just had to know, without thought, naturally, or you’d always end up getting it wrong.  
  
“Things get complicated, that way,” Spike commented. “Dru is a monster. I been a monster in my time. Still am, mostly. And Angelus, you know. Others, that you don’t. There are true monsters out there, love, by whatever measure you choose. No cure for ‘em except to kill ‘em. No compromise, no dickering. Just put ‘em down, do ‘em as quick as you can.”  
  
“I know. The old rules aren’t holding up. Have to make some new ones. And if that’s complicated, then it’s complicated. I’m giving you a new job, all right?”  
  
“What’s that, pet.”  
  
“Director of Demon Relations. Punch me whenever I go all human-bigot….” Another thought struck. “Was Dawn jealous of me? About you?”  
  
“No, love. Not that I ever knew. Mostly she pissed you off stealing your clothes.”  
  
“And don’t take this wrong but--”  
  
“No. Red as good as asked the same thing, an’ I was good: didn’t hit her even a little. No, love. Neither of us wanted that. Not her and not me.”  
  
“Ahuh. Have to work on that, then. Takes the mood right away if you’re looking at me and thinking fifteen-year-old jailbait kid sis.”  
  
“Sixteen. An’ a half. And yes, that does come into it sometimes.”  
  
“Ever fight with her? Spar with her, that sort of thing? Like you do with the SITs?” When he just shook his head, Buffy thought she saw the beginning of a way around that particular impasse.  
  
It helped, she found, if she thought about this Dawn as Spike’s sister rather than her own, which was just too weird. But if she imagined the girl as his kid sister that he had lots of habits and ways left over from, and lots of unresolved feelings about, and was grieving for, and that Buffy reminded him of powerfully sometimes and in some ways, she could get her mind around that, accept that.  
  
She’d never thought about vampires having families. To the degree she thought about it at all, she’d thought of each one alone, isolated. Like the Slayer.  
  
It wasn’t true, anymore, for her. And maybe it had never been true for them.  
  
She thought, _For practical purposes, in just about every way that matters, Spike is Angel’s son._  
  
That had never occurred to her before because they were about the same apparent age, you couldn’t see the near-century discrepancy the way you could with people. Other people. There certainly were ways it wasn’t true. But in a lot of ways, it was. And she’d have to think about that, to understand what it meant. To Spike. And to Angel. And to her.  
  
She trailed fingers down his left arm, along the spiral of the tat. “Now, see, I know that: that’s hers, isn’t it.” A nod. “Then that’s hers. I won’t mess with it or give you grief over it. All I want is what’s mine. And that’s you, right?”  
  
Another nod. Another big breath.  
  
“Then d’you think maybe we can get this show on the road again?”  
  
Finally, he turned loose of her. Then changed his mind and hugged her close again. Then went around the front, and they both got in.  
  
Somehow Buffy wasn’t surprised when he pulled in at the next convenience store and came back with cigarettes for himself and a soda for her. You didn’t have to understand all the connections to know they were there and see them happening.  
  
She had to make a friend of this Dawn: an ally. Both of them on the same side, both looking out for him. Things would be better then. She was pretty sure of it.  
  
“So, tell me about her,” Buffy said, sitting close and nudging until Spike put the non-tat arm around her, though that meant his switching hands with the cigarette. “Tell me about Dawn.”


	6. Section 2: Approaches — The Boogey Man Credo

Since it was raining, Spike declared it a game night. So they all piled into the SUV, about thirty of them packed like sardines, and spilled out at the Auburn Park soccer field, which had big floodlights at the corners and was the preferred field of combat for Capture the Flag a la Spike.  
  
No use of the hands allowed, except to hold the “flag” itself: a tattered terry washcloth that, wet and muddy, could be balled and thrown and could knock a girl down if she didn’t watch sharp and let it hit her smack in the face.  
  
There were two teams, and the object was to touch the flag to the opposing team’s goal, by any means at all. Pure chaos. Everybody muddy and sliding within minutes. The nearest approximation to mayhem that could be contrived, with no weapons and nobody dying, full-out and frantic. And Spike loved it.  
  
Standing by the SUV under a large red golf umbrella, wearing a bright yellow rainproof poncho, Buffy watched Spike and the SITs getting filthy and having wild fun.  
  
He was beautiful in motion and in his happiness. Wonderful to watch. He’d take a jump, straight up, and it was like watching a skater’s spin: revolving in midair at least 90 degrees, almost infinite hang time, calmly scanning, finding the best receiver faced in his direction and ready, then pitching the wad of cloth hard, overhand or sidearm, before disappearing into the scrum already wheeling and sliding and passing around him, following the flag’s new trajectory and he right at their heels and then overtaking, to trip and deflect and block, opening the way for a run or a further pass. If there was a chance at an interception, he’d somehow find a little more acceleration, another step held in reserve to push off, and bring the rag down one-handed even when it meant coming down hard in the mud with everybody piling on and trying to grab it away.  
  
Running through anybody not quick enough to get out of his way, dumping SITs who would then come up grinning and go right after him again and dump him in turn, if they could. Everybody nearly falling down laughing when somebody took a particularly spectacular spill. Your basic evil monster laughing his head off with a bunch of Potential Slayer girls whose consensus was that he was about the neatest thing since Leo, or whoever teenaged girls considered droolworthy at the moment. And quite a few of them, Buffy noted, very conspicuously not wearing a bra under their soaked upperwear: some because they didn’t need one but most although they did. _Rah feminism!_ didn’t seem an appropriate explanation.  
  
A good part of the time, Spike was in game face. It came and went like simply one of the expressions his face had--like a smile, or a frown. Nobody seemed to notice or care. Any more than they gave any visible notice to the varied and potentially embarrassing wet T-shirt displays of full frontal chestitude. All just intent on the score and the game. Yeah, sure.  
  
When Buffy first set Spike in authority over the SITs, there’d been some vague idea, maybe expressed, maybe only assumed, that as the Slayer, it was beneath her dignity and image as leader to involve herself in the everyday routine of their training. She should stay aloof, distant, and awe-inspiring, what with the dying and the multiple world-saveage and that sort of thing.  
  
Buffy slid the umbrella shut and absurdly tapped water off it before leaning it against the front wheel of the SUV. Then she whipped off her poncho or would have whipped it off if a gust of rainy wind hadn’t tangled it; she wrestled herself free of the poncho, let it fall, and stood revealed in her dangerous lilac sweats with only one knee out , fully bra’d and fortified, and ran onto the field waving her arms, shouting, “New rules! New rules! The short blonde gets to play!”  
  
Everybody looked at her. Well, everybody _should_ have stopped and looked at her but only Spike did and was unfortunate enough to be holding the flag at the moment which meant he got piled on and buried. Getting up, hitching his shoulders irritably, he watched the play proceeding downfield and yelled, :Oi! Here!”  
  
_Then_ everybody stopped and came trotting, trailing, back to find out why he’d called play. It was clear Buffy had left him in sole charge far too long. Anyway, he cheated and yelled simpler things that she did, so of course they noticed. She should have yelled _Oi._  
  
The rain had begun to run down her neck and she knew her hair was being plastered flat because everybody’s was except Spike’s, on account of its being quite short and the amount of gel in it.  
  
He folded his arms, giving her that cheerful _runt_ look he knew perfectly well was infuriating and only worked because he was eight inches taller. “So. Slayer. What’d you have in mind?”  
  
Puffing at wet hair did _not_ blow it off your mouth. Buffy picked up the offending strand and laid it aside with immense dignity. Then she had the misfortune to look up into his face, all angled and rain-wet and new because of the floodlights, a whole different arrangement of shadows and as bright almost as daylight: the kind of light she normally never got to see him in; and the corners of his mouth tucking down to confine the smile and not show quite so many teeth. Simply polite. Altogether gorgeous.  
  
“Slayer. You had a thought to share with us, maybe.”  
  
“Oh! Yeah. Two teams. Two captains. My SITs with me, yours with you. And we win.”  
  
“Don’t want much, do you, love?” he said, looking around as the muddy, almost indistinguishable girls divided a different way, roughly half gathering to Buffy’s right, the rest behind him, and space left between.  
  
“It’s only fair that we win because we’re prettier,” Buffy informed him. “And the other new rule is that the role of the captain is to keep the other captain out of play as much as possible.”  
  
His head tilt consulted his team and then hers. “Well, I s’pose that could be worked out. Try it, anyway. Who’s got the rag?”  
  
A tallish girl, maybe Rona, held it high over her head.  
  
He directed, “All right, midfield. Jump-off. Just the captains. Set yourselves now, children. See what the vertically challenged can show us. Rona, you do the toss, all right?”  
  
Spike and Buffy walked to where Rona had gone to stand and set themselves. Buffy had her strategy all ready. When the toss came and Spike sprang up to grab it, Buffy tackled him straight in the middle and brought him down emptyhanded. And the play rolled over them. Buffy got in a good punch to his ribs before she took off after the flag.  
  
Perhaps two hours later, he got her back fair and square in bed.  
  
**********  
  
“My strategy worked,” Buffy informed him smugly, drawing wandering cubist landscapes on his stomach with an idle finger.  
  
“You lost. Four to three.”  
  
“It wasn’t Vi’s fault she didn’t still have the flag when she got there. A natural mistake. Should have been a tie.”  
  
“Wasn’t, though. Give it up, Slayer. My children are prettier. All of ‘em. Combined. Maybe. Not just now, though.”  
  
It got intense again at that point.  
  
“Strategy,” Spike said later, as though that were one of the milder curse words. Lying on his back, he had his left arm up behind, holding one of the brass spindles. Beautiful arm, the smooth sculptural set of the muscles, how everything flowed down to the lifted shoulder. The green spiral of the encircling tattoo.  
  
“Too obvious?” Buffy responded dimly, curled up mostly against his side and chest, his other arm cradling her there.  
  
“Oh, I don’t think the children are in any serious doubt what we get up to. You recollect it’s your subtlety I love you for. That and your strategy. Or mine. Both pretty pathetic, look at it fair.”  
  
“You don’t get extra points for complications…. What.”  
  
“Something of a Dawn moment there, is all.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Put points to everything, no sense whatever to it. Always came out ahead, of course. Which was natural, considering she was the only one kept score.” Big sigh. Some silence, letting that go.  
  
Buffy didn’t give in to her impulse to reach out and stroke the tat: that would have been too pointed, maybe even painfully intrusive. The memories were his. Buffy’d only earned the right to be explained to and try to understand. The right to wear the chain and the charm that let her keep the glimpses he was willing to share: memories locked, somehow, into the serpentine tattoo, so he needed no commonplace charm to be exempted from the ambient forgetting that continually tried to erase every last trace of the not-quite-sister he missed and mourned. Buffy didn’t have the right to claim or intrude on what wasn’t hers and might never be.  
  
As best she could, Buffy tried not to do dumb stuff to him or with him anymore.  
  
After awhile Spike said, “There’s a thing I been thinking about. Dunno if it’s…. Maybe bring it up at the meeting tonight, if you think there’s anything to it. That’s for you to say….”  
  
“Noun, please.”  
  
“Yeah. Getting to that…. Well, the thing is, you recall that Michael. He’s put together a sort of a squad. Cousins. Vamps. Claims to be trainin’ ‘em, like we do the children. Or something like. An’ he wants to put together a joint patrol, so to say. Based at the school, work out from there. Take down Biters, the Turok-han. So nobody has to figure out what the target is, no ugly mistakes. Wants to show off what the cousins can do, pretty much. Said I’d speak to you about it. So now I have. You call it however you feel is best.”  
  
Buffy felt him start to shift: to turn away, put his back to her. “Hey,” she said, and made him know she’d noticed, made him stay. When she felt he’d settled again, she butted her head into his jaw and he hugged her closer a moment and then started petting, resuming the easy dialogue of touch and pace and gesture they seldom got wrong or misunderstood. Almost always right in motion.  
  
“Are you not offering an opinion,” she asked eventually, “because you don’t like the idea? Or because you do?”  
  
“Don’t see too many ways it could be bad, by itself. You and I would be there. Numbers don’t have to be even. One of his lot sets a foot wrong and I’ll do them and Michael both. And he knows that. An’ still wants to try it. Don’t see too much harm in givin’ it a try. But Rupert, he’ll go straight up in the air. We both know that. Dunno about Red, how she’d jump. Don’t think Harris will be all enthused…. Expect Anya won’t care much the one way or the other. Truth to tell, dunno what the children would make of it. They been dusting whatever vamps they came across, and except for me, that’s all they know. Might break something there we couldn’t put right after. Rupert, he won’t come around to it no matter what’s said or decided. So there’s more to consider than just the patrol by itself. An’ it’s gonna come down on you, the rest. That could get to be bad and make things harder. So I figure I’ll just leave it to you and abide the result.”  
  
“And what’s the opinion of the Director of Demon Relations?”  
  
“Hell, yes. Any of the cousins gets dusted, well, it’s not none of the children, now is it? They had their run. If they’re dumb enough to go after Biters, let ‘em. Give ‘em fucking party hats and wave them fond goodbyes. Hell, yes.”  
  
There was the diffidence, Buffy thought. The deference he never failed to show the Slayer. And then there was the knife-edged, unapologetic ruthlessness underneath. That was the demon of it. Of him. No matter what face he was wearing at the moment.  
  
“All right, I’ll think about it. Another thing,” she said. “I don’t think you’ll like it, but just put it on a shelf and look at it once in awhile. See if it grows on you.”  
  
“Don’t want none of that now.”  
  
What he did want, he didn’t have much trouble making clear. And Buffy went along with that for awhile. Then she told him, “Go to game face. I want to see it.”  
  
Poised above her on braced arms, all luminous ivory shining in the candlelight, he turned his head completely aside and didn’t answer her any way at all.  
  
“Do it. Let me see it. Don’t you, can’t you trust me to see it and still know it’s you? Do it, Spike.”  
  
His breathing changed: she’d upset him. Quite a lot. “You don’t want that. An’ I don’t want you to want that.”  
  
“Jealous of it?” she challenged.  
  
“Something like. There’s bints get off on doin’ vamps. Don’t think much of that, actually. Don’t like it.”  
  
Buffy put her hands on his shoulders and started kneading, digging deep. Arguing with her fingers and the connections, flesh to flesh. “Because they think vamps are freaks. And monsters. And that’s scary and sick and off-putting, right? But here I am. And I’ve nearly made myself not just believe but _feel_ that vamps are people. Not human people, but people. And that’s part of you, and I want you to show it to me. Show _you_ to me. Maybe it will be better than you think. Dare you.”  
  
“No, love. Not gonna do that. You want that, you go elsewhere.”  
  
She smacked him, because that remark deserved it. “Dare you. You know you’re gonna give in, when haven’t you given in when I knew it was important? So don’t start doing dumb stuff.”  
  
“No,” he said, and pulled away. Even got out of bed and walked away. Collected his cigarettes off the table and lit one from a candle, giving her his back, his slanted shoulders. Balanced like a dancer.  
  
Buffy pushed up on an elbow, wondering in spite of herself if insisting about this was right and necessary as she’d thought. “You show the children.”  
  
“That’s different. Doesn’t signify. They need to see both the faces. Get accustomed.”  
  
“I need to get--“  
  
“No. Leave off about it. You dunno what’s…operating here. It’s a whole thing, can’t just split off the part you’d like to play with an’ all the rest ain’t there too. Doesn’t work that way. ‘Tisn’t me doin’ the dumb stuff here. Take my word or not, ‘s’all the same. Some things, you nag all you want, ‘s’not gonna happen. Won’t be that to you. So you’d best let it be, find some other game to play.” Then he wheeled around and he _had_ gone vamp-faced: angry, golden-eyed, deeply frowning. Startling and beautiful as the long, supple lines, contained muscular strength, and alien stare of a leopard. “You say to me once that you love me, I might consider it. Not otherwise. No.”  
  
And Buffy leaned back on the pillows and conceded this round. Not that he’d won, but that they’d both lost. Another stalemate.  
  
Spike would mostly compromise but his demon, never. And that’s what she needed to come to terms with. What she needed both of them to be reconciled to. But she accepted that until something changed, that wasn’t going to happen. He wouldn’t risk it, or trust her, partly because he didn’t trust himself. And partly because, with all the changes and despite the fact that there was no one more important in her life, despite all the range of feelings she had for him and how much she needed him in all ways, he knew it wasn’t love and wouldn’t finally be content with anything less or anything else.  
  
She couldn’t sing that tune. Her voice somehow didn’t go up that high. Pretty good on the alto stretches, she thought, but didn’t have that true, clear soprano you couldn’t mistake, once you’d heard it.  
  
He’d turned away again, not waiting for any response or answer, knowing none was coming. He didn’t bring it up often--in fact, hardly ever. But she thought her silence in this one respect was something he was always aware of under and through all lesser silences, and mostly accepted, silent in turn unless forced to put words to it.  
  
“All right, Spike,” she said so quietly nobody but a vampire could have heard her. “All right. Come back to bed now.”  
  
“Not just now, pet. Presently.”  
  
**********  
  
At that evening’s Scooby+Giles and also Anya meeting, after they’d finished the agenda items and most of the snacks, Buffy knocked loudly on the side of the bucket she was sitting on because yelling _Oi_ didn’t seem appropriate. When everybody looked at her, she said, “There’s something else I want to take up. Reconvene in the yard. Don’t want to check the hallway every five minutes for ‘little pitchers.’”  
  
Hand in the chips bowl, Xander looked around the front room. “Sal Maglie’s here? And we’re keeping secrets from him because…?”  
  
“The variety with ears, Xander,” said Giles, in his pedantic Giles-y way, balancing his drink while he got up from the couch. From his own flask, since proper Watchers didn’t do half-strength tepid red Kool-Aid.  
  
“All right,” Xander responded argumentatively, carrying the chips bowl possessively against his chest, “what kind of pitchers _don’t_ have ears?”  
  
“Van Gough pitchers at the Louvre?” Willow proposed, trotting along behind with the dip bowl and the paper plate of radishes.  
  
Xander said, “Score one for Willow punnage.”  
  
At the same time Anya, who’d latched onto Xander’s left arm, said, “I met a client at the Louvre once, right by the statue of Fame. Naked, naturally--the statue, not the client. Perched on one foot and looked like a naked woman with some grey disease, maybe leprosy though that’s more silver, trying to write on a high chalkboard. But the chalk-looking things are actually trumpets. Not everybody knows that, but there’s a plaque. Well, this client….”  
  
Anya’s brisk prattle diminished as the procession followed Giles into the kitchen and then presumably out, by the squeak-smack of the door.  
  
Buffy and Spike traded a look. She noticed he already had his cigarettes in his hand. He was politely waiting for her to go so he could follow. Rearguard to the dangerous business of getting from the front room to the back yard. If she sat back down now he would too, except he wouldn’t smoke.  
  
At times like this, Buffy realized all anew how profoundly weird her friends and associates were.  
  
When Buffy went out the back door, Spike turned and pointedly shut both doors, inner door and storm door, in Andrew’s hopeful face. Then Spike went down the steps and folded crosslegged on the grass off by the lilac bush. Willow had collected a plastic tray-table for the assorted snacks and everybody but Anya, still recounting her tale of her Louvre Vengeance client, were opening and positioning lawn chairs. When she found everybody seated but her, Anya set her beady-eyed stare on Xander, who dutifully surrendered his chair to her and went off to get another for himself.  
  
Buffy sat down on the top step of the porch--nearly always the unofficial podium. Except when Spike held court: he always preferred to be at ground level and a little to the side and the back. Lurking and watching even at gatherings he himself had called.  
  
Buffy rubbed her hands on the knees of her jeans. Not that her hands were sweaty or anything. She just felt like doing it.  
  
“OK,” she said, “here’s the what. Next item of business is the Boogey Man Credo. According to the late and highly unlamented--by me--Council of Watchers, vampirism is a loathsome affliction, a form of demonic possession in which the soul is ejected. These soulless monsters are all evil from the get-go and enemies of humanity. They should be put out of our misery as quick as possible and by any means necessary. Any dispute or discussion on this?” She was looking straight at Giles.  
  
“No,” Giles said. “Ignoring the sarcasm, that’s fundamentally correct.”  
  
“That’s fundamentally bullshit, Giles. And I hope you know it, because I certainly do. And I have for quite a while but not nearly long enough. For centuries, Slayers were children, and that definition is intended to frighten children. And no Slayer ever had the chance to grow up or question it. I have, and I do. Maybe the Watchers knew better. I hope they did. Because I’d rather have them hypocritical than utterly, irredeemably stupid.”  
  
“There is,” Willow commented, frowning thoughtfully, “a pronounced resemblance to ‘The only good (hostile minority of choice) is a dead (hostile minority of choice).’ I know if I heard that now for the first time, it would probably set off my bullshit detector. Very non-PC.”  
  
Buffy said, “We now have in our custody most if not all of the Potential Slayers in the world. Young and gullible and scared, just like I was when I first became the Slayer and swallowed it all whole and spit it back on request. I am not gonna repeat that crap to them. And I’m gonna insist that nobody else does, either. But there needs to be something in its place and I don’t have anything like that. So I want us all to put our heads together and come up with a new definition that sets out the true relation between humanity in general, and the Slayer in particular, to the cousins.” Deliberately, she choose Spike’s word, and Willow and Xander traded blank glances.  
  
“Vampires,” said Anya. “Slang.”  
  
“More than slang,” Buffy said. “Because every single vampire there is started out as human. I accept that they’re not anymore. But they were, and most of ‘em remember. These aren’t bug-eyed Martians from Andromeda--”  
  
Spike couldn’t resist drawling, “Didn’t know the Martians had colonized Andromeda, pet.”  
  
Buffy rolled on, after a quelling, pointed glance, “They have pretty much the same wretched senses of humor as the rest of us. They tell stories and sing songs. Maybe the stories are a little on the gruesome side, but some kids seem to like that.” Buffy was thinking of Dawn, what Spike had told her, but didn’t want to get off track explaining that and therefore didn’t say so. She was pretty certain he’d caught it, though. “They have homes, and friends. They can love and do, some more faithfully than others. There are smart ones and stupid ones, brave vamps and cowards. Some of them love music, especially if it’s loud. Some may get off on string quintets, for all I know. Despite the lack of a human soul, which I think we all will agree on except for certain special cases, they can and do give their word and then _keep_ it, come hell or high water. Can’t do that without some kind of sense of honor. They’re much more like us than they are different, so I have no problem calling them cousins because that’s pretty much what they are. A different branch of the family; but if they’re monsters, they’re _our_ monsters. And whatever we say about them should be true to that. True to what we actually know about vampires. We don’t have to settle this all tonight, but I thought we could make a start and then everybody get together a draft and we’ll talk about it again next time. Who wants to start?”  
  
“I will,” said Spike, and everybody looked at him as if vaguely uneasy about what he might say. “Red, you got a notebook?”  
  
Willow lifted and displayed it, nodding.  
  
“Don’t necessarily need to write this down,” Spike said, finally lighting the cigarette he’d been holding. “But might be somebody will say something worth it. Doubt it, but it’s possible. An’ that occasion should be memorialized….Overall, vamps are a lot more independent than humans. Don’t need much and don’t depend on one another for it like you have to. Get a good lair to rest, then hunt maybe every couple, three days. Find some poor idiot and eat ‘em, drain ‘em. Do something else, the rest of the time. Play poker, maybe. Follow sports, maybe. Gossip. Vamps are terrible gossips. But that’s not important enough to write down…. Let’s see, what else. We live on blood, that’s common knowledge. Can eat other things for the fun of it and can make do for awhile with animals, but that don’t satisfy and it tastes really putrid from a carcass or preserved. It’s not the blood itself that signifies--it’s the life in the blood. We feed on life, and blood is only how the life is carried. Most people don’t seem to understand that, including those who should. And the closer that life is to us, the more we get out of it. So there’s not much life to be had, for a vamp, in a cat. Or a rat. Or a pig. Soon or late, it has to be human blood, and the person alive while the vamp feeds. So vamps are always gonna prey on people, on humans.  
  
“However, to feed, there’s no requirement to kill. Can get by quite nice, for quite a long time, doin’ just little sips now and again. We don’t specially like killing, except some of us, just mean that way. Not all of us. Not all the time. When that happens, that’s about the power, not about the blood. In Europe, Middle Ages and maybe before for all I know, there were vampire knights, basically appointed assassins, lived at the courts and got on there quite well--never killed anybody local, just whoever they got aimed at. Met one once in Bavaria or Lichtenstein, I forget, and he told me, and I got no reason to doubt it. A good arrangement, and it worked in that instance for a couple centuries, each new ruler inherited him and his services, all regular an’ everybody satisfied. Name of Geoffrey, with a ‘G,’ I think it was. Think maybe that got written down some places. Likely you could find it, Rupert, if you cared to.  
  
“So vamps and humans are always gonna be at odds. But it’s not necessarily a kill or die situation for you lot. There are negotiations possible. There have been arrangements in the past, and now, even, that I know about. Knew one chap in New York lived with a lady all of fifty years. Drank from her only a little, and only when she said: just how they did, that pleased them. Then she died, of course, and he started killing everything in sight, mostly laired in Central Park, and finally got dusted by the Slayer was there at the time. But that’s a different story.  
  
“Ain’t sayin’ anything except that it’s not so absolute as Watchers would have you believe. It depends. That’s about what I have to say. Haven’t said anything except what’s true. Somebody else can take a try now based on bugger-all and I’ll try not to laugh too hard.”  
  
Xander hurriedly finished chewing chips, gesturing. “Write this down, Will: Vamps are scary and annoying and talk too much.”  
  
Willow dutifully added that to her summary.  
  
Xander said, “And how about the demon?”  
  
Eyes on her notebook and writing as she spoke, Willow said, “ _Demon_ is the wrong word. _Animus_ , animating spirit, would be closer. Essentially, it seems to be a kind of symbiont capable of being propagated into a new host from an existing one under conditions of near-complete exsanguination.” She used her pen top to scratch the side of her nose. “In the Middle Ages, when the first descriptions of vampires we have were written down, demonic possession was probably the only way people could think about it. But that’s the wrong paradigm. Neither a demon nor possession is really involved. Anyone can be possessed at any time whereas the conditions for transmitting an animus are very limited and specific. It’s an inhabiting, animating spirit, and it’s there to stay. You can’t exorcise a vampire and get the human back, for instance, but that _can_ work with possession. An actual permanent and predictable physical change results. Possession isn’t like that. The religious vocabulary is outdated, inefficient, inaccurate, misleading, and mostly wrong. More Boogey Man Credo. Does that sound OK, Spike?”  
  
Spike shrugged. “Demon’s always been good enough for me. Have to get the pup, that Andrew, if you want to get into the Star Trek Trill routine.”  
  
“Oh!” said Xander. “The Trill! Except no: no spots. And Jadzia Dax is a whole lot prettier.”  
  
“Give it a rest, Harris.”  
  
Buffy looked over at Spike. “Spike, if you can, give me a yes, no, or maybe on this. Are vampires automatically allied with evil? Should I assume any vamp, if given a chance, is gonna do what the First wants him to?”  
  
“Damn well _not._ We like bein’ our own dogs, don’t take well to orders from anybody, ever. I told that Michael, organizing vamps to do damn near anything is about like herding cats.”  
  
“Make up your mind,” put in Xander. “Dogs or cats?”  
  
“Oh, an’ I s’pose you never tried to jam two metaphors together, Mr. I-never-went-to-college-because-they-didn’t-offer-scholarships-for-bein’-a-git?”  
  
Willow put up a tentative hand. Across Xander and Spike’s bickering, she asked, “Michael?”  
  
“All right,” said Buffy briskly, “that’s enough of that discussion for now. I want some sort of statement, no more than three or four sentences, from each of you by the next meeting. If you can, run off copies and circulate them in advance.”  
  
“That’s homework!” Xander protested.  
  
“Tough. Do it anyway, Xander. Which brings us to the last point. Michael is a vamp. A cousin. Spike knows him but doesn’t vouch for him in any way, shape, or form. Just a guy. Right, Spike?”  
  
“About that, yeah.”  
  
“And he’s made us a proposition. He’s recruited, or chosen, or whatever he’s done, some vamps willing, nay eager, to wipe out some Turok-han, that they call ‘Biters,’ which is certainly appropriate. Biters, it seems, have been disrupting Sunnydale’s vampire population nearly as much as they have the daylight taxpayers we all know and love and try to protect. And Mike wants to fight. He’s proposed a mixed patrol of SITs and his own…people?… And I’ve decided to try it, with all appropriate safeguards anybody wants to propose. Xander.”  
  
“First proposal: stay home.”  
  
“Thanks, Xander, I knew I could count on you. Next?”  
  
Willow said, “I’d want to read them. Nothing personal, just general intentions. They gonna go for that, Spike?”  
  
“Maybe. Specially if you don’t go walkin’ around in their heads in your great heavy boots like you do. Don’t see why we’d even need to tell ‘em, except if that’s your requirement.”  
  
“Yeah.” Willow smiled at her notebook a bit wryly. “Consent’s important. I try to cross all the I’s and dot all the T’s, all regular and proper.”  
  
“Probably could be worked out. If they won’t do what Michael tells ‘em on a thing like that, he should probably go ahead and dust ‘em anyway, they’re not gonna be no use. So, yeah, that can be managed.”  
  
Calmly and deliberately, Giles set his glass on the table, rose, and walked out to the street to his car. Got in and drove away.  
  
Spike remarked, “Well, there’s that county heard from.”  
  
Buffy sighed. “About what I expected. But he has a right to have his say, even if that means I have to pry it out of him. _So_ not looking forward to that.”  
  
“When,” Spike asked.  
  
“I’ll need a few days. For Giles. And to think out the best way to tell the SITs. I figure that’s yours, Spike: you know them best. And it would be best coming from you. But I’ll sit in, whatever you want. We can figure that out later. Say Saturday. That’s a busy night, lots of people out. Good hunting, I imagine. We’ll do it Saturday.”  
  
“Good enough,” said Spike, and rose. “I’ll tell Michael, then. Mark is the school, toward Willy’s. Just past sundown, to give Red time an’ time for anything else anybody figures is called for.”  
  
“All right.”  
  
Spike too headed for the street, swung a leg over his bike, and a second later was off, the raw noise of the unmuffled engine slowly fading.  
  
“Well,” said Willow, looking for a final unbroken chip in Xander’s bowl. “That will certainly be interesting. I assume I’m invited?”  
  
Buffy nodded. She thought they’d probably end up with more spectators than patrol, but maybe that would be for the best. Whatever happened, everybody would see it. And that would probably eliminate most, if not all, the possible ways things might develop from there. Then, they’d know.


	7. Section 2: Approaches — The Productions of Time

Spike stopped the bike, set the kickstand, and pocketed the key. But then he spent a couple of cigarettes’ worth of time, glancing occasionally at the lighted front window of Giles’ mini-efficiency, in the row of identical units, with the feeling that it was the other way around and the window was watching him, seeing if he’d actually do it or not.  
  
So of course eventually he had to. He pitched the last cigarette, went up the walk, and knocked on the door.  
  
When the door opened, he said at once, looking at his boots, “I got no quarrel with you. If it wasn’t for the children, I’d have nothing to do with it neither, for all I was the one who brought it up. Don’t like any part of it whatever. But it’s what has to be done if the children are to stand a chance against the Turok-han. How I feel about it don’t signify. And whether Red contends we’re _demons_ or _animi_ or goddam _afrits_ , I couldn’t care less. We are what we are and changing names don’t change that.”  
  
Giles said coldly, “An accurate Latin plural done on the fly is marginally enough to keep me from slamming the door in your face. What do you want, Spike?”  
  
“A little talk.”  
  
“Very well. Come in.”  
  
“Don’t want to come in. Don’t think I could abide walls just now. Maybe you could come out awhile. If you would. Saw a picnic table off the other end of the row. Maybe there. Don’t expect it would take a whole long while.”  
  
Spike stuck his hands in his pockets and started off, paying no attention to whether there were any following noises or not. The picnic table was the kind with an attached bench on each of the long sides. He slid up onto the table and put his boots on the bench. He’d just lit a cigarette when Giles came. With precise motions, the Watcher set on the table a bottle of very good single malt and two of the stupid wrapped glasses.  
  
“No,” said Spike. “That’s generous, but no. Have to keep close track of myself these days…. I expect you’re Church of England. I’m Church of Fucking Practicality and sod the rest. You want to figure I’m damned, it’s no skin off my nose and you’ll get no argument from yours truly about it. Sometimes, seems that’s the only answer that makes sense.” He drew on the cigarette, then gestured with it randomly. “There’s things somebody should know, about what’s goin’ on and what’s coming. Nothing I can talk to Buffy about. But somebody should know. So I’m gonna tell you, if you’ll give me your word not to say anything about it to a living soul unless you know you must. Won’t dispute your judgment on that. Sometimes your principles don’t get on too well with my practicalities, but we’ve managed before and come to terms. So: we got a deal, or not?”  
  
Having unwrapped a glass, Giles poured himself a deliberate measure, the fussy overprecise way that he did. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, Spike. How are you bearing up. Regarding Dawn. Obviously I’ve noticed your new fashion statement, personal adornment. I presume it was put there to be noticed.”  
  
“Don’t give the least fucking damn if it’s noticed or not. It’s for what it means, not what it looks like. Don’t have to give account of myself to you.”  
  
“Very well. Perhaps that came out more abrasive than I intended. If so, I apologize. So. How is it with you?”  
  
In what had become a habitual gesture, Spike rubbed the back of his left hand with his right: touching the words. Freshening his awareness of them. “About at the end of my tether. Try to keep on keeping on but ‘s’not working. Some days better, some days worse. No matter. What I have to tell you has to do with what is, and what’s coming. Some of it, I’ve seen. Visions, like. I think they’re from…from the fact it was Dru that turned me. And if some way we all come through this, that’s a thing I’d like to talk to you about sometime. Considering I don’t doubt you’re sometime gonna try to put a new Watchers Council together, it’d be nice to have some true things said, like raisins in among all the tripe…. But that doesn’t signify now. I need your word to go any farther with this.”  
  
“I swear I will keep your confidence until in my best judgment that would no longer be the right thing to do.”  
  
“Good enough.” Spike got his lighter out of his pocket and started playing with it. Slipping it from hand to hand. Clicking the flint to a flame, then snapping the cover shut, and then again. Turn the cool silver weight around and about between his palms. Couldn’t abide his hands being empty or still any length of time. Balancing himself and the things he touched, testing and feeling the balance every moment with a sense of faraway speculation.  
  
He began, “I think what’s coming is gonna depend quite a lot on the cousins. I’ve spoken to Michael, and we’re on for Saturday, that patrol. So that’s the beginning, if it goes all right. There are quite a few hundred vamps in Sunnydale, and damn near all of them could fight and would if it were put to them the right way, so they could see their own advantage in it. Then once they’re in, _hold_ them in. But it can’t be me that does that. Since Dawn’s been gone, I haven’t been connecting all that well. Can’t know what to do except by the rules. And the rules can’t hold me….” A shrug, a small downpulled smile. “You had beef for your dinner, Rupert. And port for afters. Pie, I think, though could be a pudding, what they call pudding this side, sweet…. Some sodding bad coffee an’ then decent brandy from your flask to cut the taste, at the meeting. I know that, an’ it’s damn distracting….”  
  
Another tight, private smile at the flash of alarm and uneasiness plain in the beat of the man’s blood, the scent from exposed skin, the quicker pull of breath. Nothing to be seen but all there, known with complete immediacy. Fiddling with his lighter, distantly amused as one layer among many, Spike said dryly, “No fear, Watcher. I need you to outlast this night and I still have the choice. But ‘tisn’t because I don’t know or notice. Or it couldn’t be otherwise.”  
  
Giles said coolly, “I am quite aware that you’re a vampire, Spike. It seems it’s Buffy that forgets.”  
  
Spike responded, “I recall a bit of schoolboy Latin and you trot out the good booze. Think you’re a little too easy to please, Rupert. We’re not all chums together here. My kind eat your kind, and you better not forget it because I never do. You’re safe enough now but I won’t answer for tomorrow.”  
  
“Are you putting me on notice?”  
  
“Maybe. Best if everybody knows where he stands.”  
  
Watcher gave him a nasty look. “If you’ve quite finished trying to intimidate me, perhaps you’d make your point, assuming that you have one. You’ve given the impression you want my help, or at least my cooperation. If so, you’ve chosen a curious way of going about it.”  
  
The night began brightening to Spike’s changing eyes and he stopped, drew that back into himself again. “So you don’t think diplomat would be a good career choice here.”  
  
Watcher barely controlled a smile and had some of his drink. “Get on with it. Save the dangerous creature of the night routine for some other time.”  
  
“Well, if you say…. If diplomat’s out, I could fall back on being a fucking disastrous general. Got an atrocious temper and once I blow up, I don’t look nowhere else, don’t check for something comin’ up from behind. No strategy. Straight ahead, that’s all, and through whatever’s between. Though that’s fine for a bar fight, seems it’s not the best qualification for command. No makings even of a bloody second-rate T.E. Lawrence here. So I expect I should give it a pass.” Soberly, frankly, Spike admitted, “I don’t keep enough distance from things. If I get all caught up in this, I’m gone. Running with the pack. Snacking on small children, the occasional family pet. Whatever offered…. Couldn’t keep myself from it. I’ve seen it, dreamed it…. It will have to be Angel. He’s the only one can catch hold of this and bloody well hammer them all into line. Me, I’ll fight, sure enough, but after torturing some poor bugger a day or two, I lose interest. Not never Angel. He bloody well perseveres, never tires, never looks aside, stares it all down like a basilisk, everything all turned to stone….You know: he’s done you once. No need to go on about it, then. You know.”  
  
“I’m surprised you’d even consider such a thing.”  
  
“So am I. But I don’t see any other good option. Fact I don’t like it don’t change anything at all.” Spike pitched a cold butt and lit a fresh cigarette, pausing a minute to watch the flame play. “This will have to be his, in the end. But I will never contact him or summon him or beg him to come. Probably just as well, because I’d likely make a hash of that too, just out of sheer contrariness. Can’t help that, around him. I can’t abide him, nor him, me. So it would have to be you.”  
  
By degrees the night had brightened to him again, every sound from the road and the hillside beyond crisp and sharp, scents awakening like the long soft toss of a shawl, and him comfortable and composed within his body, all the long bones at rest, fit smooth together as they should. All good and easy down the back of his neck, down the arms, centered and patient in the spine. Face settled as it wished to go, almost serene.  
  
The Watcher didn’t like it, it set him uneasy. Spike couldn’t bring himself to care.  
  
Still playing with the lighter, watching how the flat sides glinted and flashed, he continued, “Don’t believe it would ever occur to Buffy on her own account, to ask Angel for such help. At least she’s never said. Don’t believe she’d do it, though--to set him over me. I don’t believe she’d do me like that. Even though she should, and it could all hang by that. She don’t care for me, Rupert, enough to set that aside when it’s necessary. Tries extra hard on that account, tryin’ to make up for what’s not there, between us; an’ that locks her in, doesn’t let her see what’s best. To set me aside or throw me away at need. To use me like she’d use herself. Slayer’s ruthless; Buffy is not. She’s got to be made to see it. Set the Slayer in charge, act according to the Slayer’s priorities. Mission must come first--before me and before herself. Or it will all be lost. I don’t believe she’d listen to me about such a thing. Don’t believe she could face me and still do it. So it would have to be you.”  
  
With the dispassionate Watcher calm Spike mostly despised and still relied on, Giles said, “What do you mean to do, Spike?”  
  
“I don’t precisely know. Only know what I can’t. What I’m not fit for. Something dumb or other, I expect. She doesn’t need this from me, with all the rest. No matter how things fall out, I’ll keep it away from her as best I can.  
  
“But Angel. If he comes, he’s in the place to take from me every fucking thing I care about. And that scares me so bad, I can’t find the words to tell you. I’ll lose it on my own terms before I’ll let him take it from me. And all the same, if that’s the only way this can turn out right, then that’s what has to be. If afterward I tell you different, don’t pay it no mind whatever. Anybody gets scared enough, they’re apt to do all manner of dumb stuff. Can’t answer for myself in that respect. This is all I got, best I know to do: to tell you and leave it with you. And trust you to do what you think is right. Which I got a hell of a lot more faith in than any notion I ever had of what was right. Don’t you let them push you out, Watcher. You stick with this. Because what in the green world is she ever gonna do without you? That’s all, then. I’m done.”  
  
He pitched the last cigarette and lifted easy off the table, didn’t need the duster to balance him, all smooth-moving and right.  
  
“Spike. Take care.”  
  
Spike wheeled around and leveled an arm long to point. “Rupert, you move from where you’re staying. Move tonight. An’ if ever I come to your door again, don’t you let me in.”  
  
He felt lighter, freer, for having that seen to and settled. Maybe he wouldn’t go straight back, cruise around a bit, let the air and the night come in. Good he’d gone and got his bike back. Wherever he was going, he could go fast.  
  
Might be pleasant, though, to talk to Dawn again, see how things were for her, where she was and as she was. It’d been on his mind for some time, to do that: measurelessly lonely for her, lost and disconnected in his days; now, no reason anymore to deny himself. Since it had been done once, it could be done again, and no great matter to make the Powers manifest her to him as they had before, if he could just annoy them sufficiently. And that was something he was generally pretty good at.  
  
That might well be fast, too.  
  
**********  
  
Spike stowed the bike in among some bushes by the house on Brown: not exactly hiding it, only putting it where it wouldn’t make a noise for itself the first time somebody looked. It wouldn’t set somebody to wondering where he was or looking for him on that account. He cut through the gap in the hedge to the back of Casa Summers and waited until the kitchen was empty to go quietly through and straight down to the basement. He set the bolt.  
  
What’d become of Anya’s high-power focusing crystal, he had no idea. But there was more than enough power swirling around him here to make up for that. Any old thing should do.  
  
He settled himself comfortable in the middle of the floor, a way he could stay for some while. His demon already free within him for the simplicity, he next set himself, reconciling to the unfitting things and putting the others away, so they’d not become distractions. He knew enough of magic to know that the first and most important thing was to focus himself. Otherwise everything would go lopsided and sideways. When he felt set, he took up the central crystal in his two hands.  
  
There was a hitch, a momentary confusion as the flow from the cardinal crystals adjusted to the different angle and purpose. Then it all came through him and out, following his intent.  
  
The reason he’d been aware of the flow beyond what the witch could detect was that it had been made for him in the first place. It was attuned to him, and he to it, and Dawn had made it from and with her blood. So all aligned proper, no need to try to force it from its natural path or control it. It connected where it was made to go and all he had to do was stay open to it, let it take its intent from him. And that was very clear. Not confused at all.  
  
He wanted Dawn.  
  
Very fast, almost immediate: immense Presence, pressure that wanted him flat, tried to push him flat, but the power of the blood sacrifice, with its absolute purity, held steady against it. The Power had to respect that.  
  
_Why do you trouble Us again?_  
  
“Because I can.”  
  
_Why should We take any notice of you, creature?_  
  
“Well, you’re doin’ that, aren’t you? So I’d guess you’re obliged to. Or you wouldn’t. You just give me what I want and I’ll be gone the sooner and you won’t have to take any notice of me anymore.”  
  
_You are insolent and annoying._  
  
“I certainly hope so. Given that a lot of practice. Now do what I say, you’re wasting more time arguing about it than it’d take to do it and be done.”  
  
And immaterial but felt, an electric presence, Dawn was there beside him blurting urgently, “Don’t be dumb now. I’ve been ready. I took enough from you to pull in all the pieces and hold them. Waiting for you. Now we have to make Them free me. Make Them give me what I need to be apart, the way I was before. They won’t want to. We have to make Them. Go for broke, Spike.”  
  
It wasn’t at all what he’d expected, but it was exactly what he needed to hear.  
  
“You owe me,” he told the Whatever, the Power, considering, gathering certainty, gathering up everything he’d come to know to make of it a weapon and a lever, like a long, straight, heavy stick. Pool cue, maybe: he could imagine that, holding that just so, to make the right angle, bring the right force. “I served your purpose and you used me, and damn near used me up. And you had no right. I’m not your creature. I came in and held things together for you when there was nothing to make me. I wasn’t part of your purpose except that I chose to be. You owe me for that. And you’re called to account for it. I claim Dawn from you, to be as she was, with nothing took from anybody alive to make her so. It’s all hers, by her own right, from having been that and lived that, past what you intended for her. So give it back to her, it’s nothing to you, she’s nothing to you now. She’s not beholden to you. You got no more call on her, no reason to make or unmake her except to square things with me. Give her what she needs and let her go.”  
  
_And if we do not?_  
  
“Then I’ll damn well keep annoying you until you do.”  
  
_We have the power to end you and make that-which-is as though you had never been._  
  
Then the Power threw it all at him: whirlwinds and storms and disorientation within those; pain and creeping disease and loss and despair. But mostly attack by scale, by vastness. Vastness of time and distance, that made any single moment or point of place meaningless and even statistically impossible, as if nothing could be that was. Multiple metamorphoses of geologic slowness, layer upon layer, change begetting change, huge, indifferent, cold. And then added to that, dimensions upon dimensions folded together in enormous detail and complexity, all alien and unknown and unknowable, far beyond what any lone creature could take in or comprehend.  
  
And at that same time, very fast in his mind, Dawn muttering, “Don’t let Them dazzle you with special effects. It’s crap, Spike. They’re just trying to distract you, make you beat yourself down. It isn’t how it seems. The game is five-card stud. You’re holding and They have bupkis. A good pair against a red flush: four hearts and the down card’s a diamond. See it this way: it’s not a vague cloudy They, it’s a Lady named Gates and She likes to think well of herself. She’s treated us like shit, and She knows it. So She’s not happy with us and She doesn’t know the difference between nice and Good. Don’t let Her bluff you. Don’t let Her make you back off. She’s bluffing and She thinks we don’t have the guts to stay in the game. Raise, and keep raising. She’ll fold. Because ending us wouldn’t be goddam Nice. It’s chicken poker, Spike. She’ll fold, or we’ll be ended, one or the other. Go straight at Her. Tear Her throat out.”  
  
And Spike found he could deflect the overwhelming Everything enough to say flatly, “Fuck you, bitch.”  
  
The special effects let up: gone, just like that. It became very quiet for awhile.  
  
Then the entity Dawn had whittled down, defined for him, as Lady Gates stated coldly, “You have no power to compel us.”  
  
“No, _you_ have the power to compel you. As long as your debt to me isn’t settled, you’re crooked and out of balance. You did that, not me. If you end me, you’ll never be right. I tell you how to square the debt. You gave me the handle and the lever I need: Dawn. And she claimed me. In your name. So as long as Dawn’s a part of you, you got to put up with me. With both of us. Mutilate yourself, or let her go. How much of you is she? Next to nothing. Why are you making this big deal about it?”  
  
Lady Gates declared haughtily, “It’s a matter of principle. No one compels Us.”  
  
“Then I’ll ask nice. Do us a nice favor here. Because you’re so big-hearted an’ all. Let the fucking child be where she belongs, where she wants--”  
  
All at once, Spike wasn’t certain, wavered. Didn’t want in any way to do Dawn like Buffy had been. Didn’t want to yank her out of someplace and a way of being he knew he couldn’t even begin to imagine--  
  
Dawn was solid enough beside him, just past where he could see without looking, to clip him sharply across the head. “Don’t be an idiot. I set this up, we set it up together. Get on with it. I put Her there for you. _Do_ Her, Spike.”  
  
Certain again, Spike shoved it all on the table that wasn’t a table: the playing field, the everything-there-was: call or fold. Chicken poker.  
  
Several things happened simultaneously. The crystal in his hands shattered. He was hit, knocked rolling, by something of no great size but infinite momentum. And there wasn’t a single scrap of magic left in the dark basement.  
  
And the child was all over him, grabbing everything she could get ahold of, hanging on like she was scared she’d be yanked away next second like had happened before. And him just as crazy, making sure she smelled right and tasted right and had the right number of fingers and features and limbs: that everything about her was exactly as it should be, exactly as with such difficulty he’d contrived not to forget. And it was, it was all right.  
  
She was babbling, “I was so scared, so scared you wouldn’t guess, know the connection was both ways and take proper hold, I was so scared what I took wouldn’t be enough--”  
  
Spike was content to just keep holding her close, with the weight all proper and her long legs, jeans and everything, exactly as she’d been when he’d lost hold of her, waving around on the floor while she found fresh ways to hang on and reattach herself. Her breathing was right, and the heart in a hurry to make the blood move, and she really smelled very fine, like she always had, and he’d actually forgotten that but it was true and part of her just the same, although he’d forgotten. So if he’d forgotten anything else, that probably was all right too. Hadn’t been all up to him, after all: she’d done it herself, too, so she’d have known not to leave anything out.  
  
Neither one of them, he thought, could have done it alone. He found it a very deep and satisfying thing, that she should have needed him and not just him needing her to bring this off.  
  
And Dawn was saying fiercely, “It serves Them right and it will serve Them well. Dimensionality has to be all the way down, has to be _here_ and _now_ , not just the everything and everywhere, and I can be that to Them, I fucking well _am_ that whether They like it or not. And I missed you so goddam much!”  
  
“Missed you real bad too, Bit. Coming all unstuck, no end to it. Kept you with me as best I could, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, an’ just exactly what did you take?”  
  
Dawn sat back then, away from him, primly adjusting her clothes and her hair, little pats and tugs. “What I needed. And you don’t need to know the rest.”  
  
“Yes, I do, Bit. An’ I’m not gonna face down Lady Gates and then turn around and let you get away with stuff. You tell me, now. What did you take?”  
  
She gave him a long, measuring look that meant she was figuring precisely how much she could get away with. Looking innocent as all hell, as if that could gain her any mileage with him, as well as he knew her.  
  
“Well, I’ll tell you this once, on condition that we never talk about it again and you forget it as quick as you can. Deal?”  
  
“Good enough.”  
  
She picked at her shirt, elaborately casual. “I took two things. One was a line of poetry. And the other was a piece of your soul. Knew you wouldn’t miss it, as little a piece as that. And it let me stay together and be and bring to me all the other pieces, so I’d be ready and all They’d have to do was let me go. All collected, all packed and waiting by the door, and it was a very tiny piece, and are you mad at me?”  
  
“And what poetry did you take, pet?”  
  
“It’s Blake. You have quite a lot of Blake, so I was pretty sure you wouldn’t mind since it was kind of an emergency, the only chance I was gonna get. _Eternity is in love with the productions of Time._ It seemed to fit, and I knew I could hang onto it and use it to keep being until you came. And are you pissed at me, Spike?”  
  
“Just don’t do it again. Had enough misery getting that soul, I dunno how much yanking about it will stand without flying all to pieces. As to the poetry, that’s not strictly mine, so I guess there’s no harm in your taking it. You got enough now of what you need to keep you going, d’you think?”  
  
Instead of answering, Dawn jumped up and started hauling him up too, though he was much too heavy for her, he had to consent and help. She started bouncing on her toes. “Come on, let’s tell Buffy, she’ll be so surprised!”  
  
“Expect she will. That, at least. Go on, then.”  
  
Dashing up the stairs, Dawn asked over her shoulder, “Did you get the bike? And will you take me out on it?”  
  
“If you like, Bit. Whatever you please.”


	8. Section 3: Engagements — Striking Distance

Custodian of the weapons, Dawn perched attentively on the back bench of the Magic Box training room watching Spike with the SITs, who weren’t precisely sure who she was, except that she belonged to Spike in a way they didn’t, which was probably enough to know for now.  
  
They’d probably expected Spike would explain when he arrived, but Spike never much believed in explanations and Dawn had doubted much account would be given for her. She didn’t mind.  
  
She’d just set down the small sack of weapons he’d had her bring, the SITs milling around and none quite bold enough to demand who she was, what she was doing here, when Spike showed up--he’d had to take the roundabout way, through the tunnels and sewers, because of the bright morning light--and came straight to her. His hand closed around her shoulder at the neck and he turned her to face them. Dawn tried to put on a pleasant, noncommittal face, just as if she didn’t know all their names and hadn’t run with them on patrol.  
  
“This is Buffy’s sis, Dawn,” he’d said. No prelude. No explanation, or hardly, continuing, “Been away awhile, an’ now she’s back. She helps me sometimes. You treat her right or you’ll hear from me about it. All right, doin’ back flips now, by twos. Push off, flip, to standing. If I can kick your leg out, you’re not doin’ it right.”  
  
Watching, Dawn noticed he wasn’t the least shy with them anymore. That had progressed, while she’d been gone. He slapped or shoved them, or kicked a badly positioned leg out from under a SIT, dumping her, and then extended a hand to yank her up again, matter-of-fact and impersonal. And all of them businesslike too, soberly watching what he did and how he did it, watching the lesson rather than him. Not the way she remembered, all the giggling and moon eyes and whispered speculations.  
  
If now and again Amanda or Kim or Rona flashed her a puzzled glance, as though some twinge of memory had sparked, Dawn didn’t let on she’d noticed. The matrix of fake facts and memories didn’t support her existence anymore. She’d have to earn everything she got and wasn’t at all displeased to have it so. Cleaner, she thought. No baggage. Start from here.  
  
Buffy had known her right away--at least who she was. Welcomed her and been glad, even if mostly for Spike’s sake. Buffy had never really needed her anyway, that wasn’t how they’d been set up. The need had been all the other way, and that was over: ended with Dawn’s keyness. So they’d greeted each other with the kind of uncomplicated happiness friendly acquaintances might have, who didn’t really know one another all that well and therefore weren’t all tangled up with buried resentments and guilts and hopes, and could simply enjoy one another’s company.  
  
They’d stayed up nearly all night, talking. Getting reacquainted. Comparing notes. Buffy wasn’t repressed and self-pitying and Dawn wasn’t clingy or shrill. Because of starting fresh, a new dynamic was emerging that Dawn thought she might actually like. Buffy had fixed French toast for breakfast and that had been pretty neat, actually.  
  
Extra points for remembering about the French toast.  
  
“Bit, why don’t you see if Anya might have a soda for you,” Spike suggested, swinging by after inspecting the nearest pair of SITs. Stopping just long enough to stroke her hair, trade a glance.  
  
Not exactly clingy, but close to it. Wanting to check on her solidity, confirm her presence, every few minutes. Amazing, then, that he’d left her to sort out things with Buffy all on her own. Thought that was important, apparently. Because this was what he did when considering only himself: check on her, touch her, make contact. And Dawn didn’t really mind, although she didn’t have the same need for confirmation. Everything was solid and here, and she knew where she was and why. She was quite comfortable being Dawn again.  
  
She saw that during their time apart, Spike had been alone in ways she hadn’t. So it would probably take him awhile not to be anxious about her. That was all right, she thought. He’d get over it and be easy with her again, given time. And they should have that, since she no longer had a passed expiration date hanging over her.  
  
Dawn shook away that thought. Too abstract. Focus on the immediate. That was what she was here for.  
  
_Where did you come from, Baby Dear?/Out of the Everywhere into the Here._  
  
Grinning wryly to herself, Dawn dragged herself out of the Everywhere into the Magic Box proper and found Anya halfway up a ladder, cleaning the shelves of crystals with a feather duster.  
  
“Hi, Anya. Spike said--”  
  
“Well! Color me astonished!” Anya exclaimed, swinging around on the ladder and nearly falling off as a heel slipped. Descending hurriedly, Anya came and gave Dawn a hug only slightly impeded by the feather duster that ended up pretty much in Dawn’s face. “Don’t tell me Spike’s managed to sweet-talk the Powers, now!”  
  
“Wouldn’t exactly call it sweet talk, but something like that,” Dawn agreed, rubbing her nose, trying to push the duster away except that Anya felt it necessary to hug her again.  
  
“Well, I’m amazed. Are you permanent now? Or just on loan?”  
  
“Pretty permanent. All solid and everything. But it’s kind of ick to talk about it, so--”  
  
“Most of the real things are,” Anya agreed, nodding vigorously. “Sex, birth, excretion. Eating. Sex.”  
  
“And the neat thing is, I don’t have to go to school anymore because all the records got poofed. Lots of time to fake something up before next fall. So I’m not failing Civics anymore, isn’t that terrific? Anyway, Spike thought you might still have some soda around.”  
  
“Well, I’ll look,” said Anya, and hustled off to check the small refrigerator under the front desk, next to the safe. Her head popped up over the desk. “So when’s the party?”  
  
“What party?”  
  
“Your homecoming party, of course! I have Diet Coke and that repulsive Dr. Pepper.”  
  
“Repulsive, please, and I don’t think anybody’s planning a party, actually, since my being away and then coming back are both so weird, what with the complete forgetting I ever existed, except for Spike and now you, of course.”  
  
Anya handed the can out over the desk. “When has weirdness ever stopped anybody around here before? We had a couplehood party for Willow and Tara, for heaven’s sake, and that one for Xander and me, the very-not-wedding one, and there was the back-from-the-dead one for Buffy, but nobody thought to tell her so she didn’t show up so that was kind of a bust--”  
  
Dawn pulled the pop-tab and sipped the soda. “I think they’d freak, Anya. Honestly. Low profile, here.” She held her bladed hand level with her eyes, then raised it to head-height, to show how low the profile should be.  
  
“Well, we’ll just disguise it then, that’s all.” Anya propped both elbows on the desk and bit her lip, in obvious thinking mode. Then she beamed in a way that made Dawn’s stomach sink in anticipation. Anya’s bright ideas had a way of turning disastrous. Anya declared, “The patrol. We can have a party for that. After all, it’s kind of a mixer. Getting acquainted, the demons and the rest of them. Cooperation. I’m sure a party would improve things. And if it’s your party too, nobody has to know but us. Now what would be appropriate by way of refreshments, not including the guests of course, that would be tacky--”  
  
Dawn backed off and retreated to the training room. “Ah, Spike?”  
  
Spike had taken a stance and a couple of SITs were taking turns trying to kick him out of it. “Yeah, what?”  
  
Dawn went to him rather quickly, glancing over her shoulder every few steps. “I think you need to head this off. Anya wants to have a party. I don’t know what it’s for, but she mentioned a patrol and demons….”  
  
Spike hung his head and sighed, relaxing from the stance, so the SITs quit kicking at him. “Right. All right, whoever can hold the longest handstand wins. I’ll get this sorted out quick as I can.”  
  
Every single handstand had been abandoned and resumed at least once, and the SITs eyeing her, wondering if she’d tell on them, before Spike returned, rubbing at the back of his neck and in the last fading of game-face. Not pleased.  
  
Dawn kept mum, figuring if he wanted a report on the handstands, he’d ask her, but she wasn’t about to volunteer. But Spike had apparently forgotten the assignment, giving the SITs a gathering wave, so that they all tipped out of their poses and came to sit around him on the mats nearest the back bench where Dawn had settled.  
  
“All right, children, there’s something afoot and I been given the chore of explaining it to you. Some of you are gonna make nice with some vamps that are not me. Gonna patrol with ‘em. An’ they’re under strict orders not to eat you, but I dunno how well they’ll listen. Might be you’ll have to remind them. To dust, if need be. However, if things go well at all, you’ll get to take down a whole lot of Turok-han. Biters, we call ‘em. Us vampires.” And looking around at the SITs, he’d gone game-faced again: second time in just a few minutes. That surprised Dawn because he generally only did that to make a point, for emphasis, briefly. But none of the SITs batted an eye, so clearly they were more accustomed to it than Dawn was.  
  
Spike continued, “It’s to be Saturday. So there’s three days to practice how you’re to do, and think about who’s goin’ and who’s not. Bit, lay out the new toys.”  
  
Dawn emptied the sack onto the mat where he could reach: a dozen tasers, each about the size and shape of a small remote. Spike picked one up gingerly and showed it around.  
  
“With the other pair, that makes fourteen,” Spike said. “So fourteen of you get to go. Volunteers only, because this could go wrong real easy. But it’s worth trying, I think. An’ so does the Slayer. I’m workin’ on getting you one apiece, but haven’t got there yet. So this is what there is. Pair of these could take down a Biter, I think. But I’ll test that out, to know for certain, before you children will need to play with ‘em. ‘Manda, why you doin’ that?”  
  
Leaning to collect one of the tasers, Amanda looked around and offered a short smile as she sat back, taser in hand. “I’m going, that’s why. Any reason not to claim mine now?”  
  
“Guess not. Just mind you don’t lose it, then. They’re not easy to come by. An’ don’t run out the charge, testing it out. In fact, don’t test it out except if I’m there to watch and say how to do. All right?”  
  
“All right, Spike.”  
  
Immediately the other SITs started snatching. In just a moment, only three tasers were left unclaimed, not counting the one Spike still held. And one of those was taken by Kennedy, Willow’s girlfriend: collected with a slow deliberation as though she were making up her mind before, during, and after claiming it. She sat holding it in both hands, frowning at it thoughtfully.  
  
Spike watched her but didn’t say anything about it. Instead, he said, “Now the thing to remember is that to the vamps with you on this patrol, you’re food. Lunch. Walking, talking lunch. They’ll probably try to behave, but that may not come to much. Not used to thinking any different than they do. And you’ll have things to learn and unlearn too, those of you goin’, so don’t you be all full of yourselves neither. You got to learn what striking range is. ‘Manda, come help me show this.”  
  
Then Spike proceeded with the creepiest demonstration Dawn had ever seen him do: walking slowly alongside Amanda from the other end of the room and without any kind of warning whirling and at her neck, not quite biting down. Then another few strolling paces and at her again. Faster than the SIT could react, although after the first time she began trying--to get an arm up, to lean away. Spike was faster.  
  
Then Spike led Amanda back to the far wall again, starting a little farther from her this time. Beyond hand-holding distance. And still at her, his hands locked tight at her shoulder and head, fanged jaws poised over the tilted neck: motion almost too fast to see. Three of those not-quite-attacks before they went to reset and began the stroll again with the distance between extended another notch.  
  
It wasn’t until he was starting from fully eight feet away that Amanda had any chance of blocking a lunge, and the first time, Spike smacked her arm away and still achieved biting position. When the next lunge was interrupted by the braced point of Amanda’s elbow, Spike stood away and told her, “Now remember, this ain’t a Bringer here. Poke him in the diaphragm, he ain’t gonna care. Breathing’s a hobby, not a necessity. Where you gonna try to hit him, pet?”  
  
“Throat?”  
  
“Could do. But miss to either side and he’s in close an’ got you. Face is better. Bridge of the nose: right between the eyes.” Spike touched his own vamped-out face, showing her. “Miss and you got maybe an eye, cheekbone, temple. Enough to set him back on his heels a second, anyway. At best you bust the nose. If he gets past your arm, inside your guard, use the taser and take him down. But if you’re minded to go ahead and dust him then, remember that means one less thing between you and a Turok-han. That’s a better use for him. Don’t waste him unless he makes you. But if you can’t back him off, don’t play about: just do him.”  
  
When Amanda had thought a minute and then nodded, Spike took her back to the far wall and made her say if he was in striking distance or not as they did another slow pavanne down the middle of the room, Spike circling in or away as Amanda came straight on. Eerily like steps in a formal old-fashioned line dance, punctuated by Spike demanding, “Now?” and Amanda responding _Yes_ or _No_. It took three processions before Spike was satisfied she’d gotten it right every time.  
  
Then he called Kim to him and did exactly the same thing with her.  
  
Uber-creepy.  
  
Presently it occurred to him that he’d left everybody else standing around with nothing to do. So he dismissed those who hadn’t claimed a taser and tried to send Dawn home too, except that she smiled and said, “No, I’m good.”  
  
“You sure? Can’t be all that much fun, watching.”  
  
“Slo-mo deathdance? I’ve never seen it before. Very edifying.” When Spike took her at her word, Dawn put her chin back on her fists, quite content to be here, watch him move. Another time, maybe, she’d bring a magazine but now he was working with Kennedy, whose stiff abrupt motions made plain that she disliked and feared him. Because of that, she made the fewest errors and needed the fewest repeats. Dawn figured Kennedy hadn’t been that comfortable with him to begin with and so had less to unlearn. Spike behaved to her exactly as he had to the others and commended her performance when they’d finished their final walk. Kennedy returned an impassive nod and then left.  
  
No need of a magazine when you had something that interesting to observe and interpret.  
  
It was nearly noon before he finished with the last of the SITs and let her go. As he came back toward Dawn, he shed game face: the first time he’d done so in about three solid hours. _Interesting_ , Dawn thought, kneeling to collect the unclaimed tasers and return them to the sack. Spike dropped full-length onto the pad, turning onto his back with one bent arm across his eyes.  
  
Dawn inquired, “Vamp patrol plus SITs plus party equals potential for extreme unpleasant wackiness?”  
  
“I expect.”  
  
“Can I be vanished again until it’s over?”  
  
A sigh. “I’d see if Harris would talk her out of it, except then he’d be all for it because it was me, asking. So that’s no good. Keep meaning to get that boy sorted. Keep puttin’ it off some way.”  
  
“Is he fun to argue with?”  
  
“Not specially. If I wasn’t on the outs with him, though, I’d have nobody left to insult. Got to be somebody I don’t have to be polite to. Getting real sick of that. Chip don’t work an’ still I can’t hit Harris, even. Not even when he has it coming. Doesn’t seem right.”  
  
Dawn flopped to use his torso as a backrest. It was midday, and he was tired: she could tell. “You can sleep here if you want. I’ll keep anybody from sneaking up and staking you.”  
  
“Now that’s an idea. But what you gonna do if they try?”  
  
“Well, there’s the fact I have three charged tasers here. And if that’s not enough, I could bite them.”  
  
“You do that. That would scare anybody off, certain sure.” He stirred enough to start combing his fingers through her hair. Dawn leaned back in lazy comfort. “You know, strangest thing, Bit: Anya an’ Red and Buffy, all three, wanted to know if we were shagging.”  
  
Dawn sat up sharply to look at him, and he was just looking back, not a scrap of self-consciousness or discomfort, telling her that just like he’d have told her anything. Delighted, she hugged him hard.  
  
“Now what’s that mean?”  
  
“Means I’m glad to be back, and no, you don’t have to worry: we manage just fine as we are.”  
  
“Oh. That’s all right then.” He resumed fuzzing at her hair when she wiggled down to let him do it.  
  
She’d believed the soul had completely robbed him of his demonic innocence--the blind spots where anybody else would boggle or cringe and he’d barge right through, quite unaware of any problem. It made her all kinds of happy to know that wasn’t so, that there were still some isolated pockets left.  
  
She liked his demon, to the extent he had let her get to know it. She liked its directness and ruthlessness, its complete clarity about what it wanted. Things were so much simpler that way. In Anya, it came out as tactlessness whereas in Spike, it was mostly violence. But whichever, that was the demon of it: tart and alien and forever surprising. Dawn had the pleasant suspicion that she was going to get the chance to know his better.  
  
Following that thought, she asked presently, “Demon getting impatient with all this uber nice?”  
  
“Somewhat. I’ll go kill a few things tonight with Michael. Test out the tasers. That should help.”  
  
From the way he said it, Dawn knew Michael was a vampire. And she’d never heard him speak of another vampire so comfortably, so familiarly, without a plain edge of contempt. Except Dru. “When do I get to meet Michael?”  
  
“Dunno, Bit. Dunno if I’d trust Michael around you. If there was a problem, I’d have to pull his head off and he’s sort of useful now. So I’d just as soon not.”  
  
Dawn shrugged. “Whatever. Want to know what Buffy made of me showing up?”  
  
“Not specially. Expect she’ll tell me. If you tell me too, stereo. And you’ll say one thing and she’ll say another and I’ll have to remember who said which or somebody will take offense.”  
  
“People are tiresome that way,” Dawn agreed. “Never saw you in game face that long at a time.”  
  
“As long as what?”  
  
“Demonstrating striking distance.”  
  
“Oh. Didn’t notice. Nobody said…. Easier that way.”  
  
Nobody said anything for awhile. When his fingers stilled in her hair, she looked around carefully and sure enough, he was asleep. Not quite turned: somewhere between, barely noticeable in the thickened brow and about the mouth a little. Defaulting to this now and not the other whenever he let go, forgot. No sign yet however that the demon was in any way at war with the soul: something she’d worried about when first she’d heard he’d acquired one. As things had turned out, the soul had proven handy, an anchor for her when she’d needed one, a Presence on the aetherial plane; but Dawn remained mistrustful of it and watchful for signs of its turning dictatorial, wanting everything its way. Human people didn’t have to put up with bossy souls. She didn’t see why Spike should either. His demon had at least squatters’ rights that should be respected.  
  
Smiling, she slid lower so she could rest her cheek over his unbeating heart. This was nice, she thought. She’d missed this.  
  
**********  
  
“So, Michael,” Spike said. “You ever get hit with a taser?”  
  
Mike’s response was an expressive glower.  
  
“Think they’re little children’s toys, do you?”  
  
“You touch me with that thing, I’ll come back at you,” Mike warned.  
  
“Why, I expect you will. Not right away, though. Apt to slow you down somewhat, but likely you know that. Been practicing with it, have you?” Spike responded, all agreeable, figuring he likely had: on his minions, squad, whatever he was calling them. But wasn’t the same as knowing in your own flesh, the way Spike did.  
  
“Got hit with an armor-piercing round once. Made quite a mess. I was the best part of a week healing from that one.”  
  
“As long as a week. My, my.” Spike smiled to himself. He hadn’t played power games with another vamp in considerable time and rather enjoyed it.  
  
They were sitting on the edge of the dock at Willy’s, the two of them, looking off in the direction of the school grounds. Eventually a Biter would come by, from the one direction or the other, and then they’d take it down. Spike had one of the big double-handed axes leaned by his knee. Tasers could put the Biter down but not dispatch it. Lots of room to be creative in that last regard.  
  
If one actually came within the boundaries Willy claimed as his, so much the better because the bounty would apply then. Might make the price of a second batch of tasers if it proved to be a busy evening.  
  
Spike was of two minds about drinking and both said yes. Absolutely, emphatically. Yet to be determined were when, and how much. One thing to get himself falling down incapable. Another thing to maybe let the lad get hurt, which wasn’t on the menu, because he’d be needed no matter how matters went later. So, later, then. And no more than for entertainment.  
  
Lighting a cigarette, Spike asked idly, “So where’d you end up after Angola?” Passing the time, getting the boyo’s history on the installment plan, observing vampire etiquette that ignored questions like where you’d been born to the other life rather than this, what family you’d left behind or slaughtered, what schooling had been reduced to a hunt for blood and a safe place to lie up during the day. He didn’t know where Michael laired. Could have found out if he’d wanted, but if anybody knew where your lair was, you were apt to wake to thieves or worse or never wake at all, so you never asked about that and you never told. Always meetings, marks, set places away from what never was home….  
  
Mike broke off in mid-sentence and they were both watching, listening long and intent. Spike slid off the ledge and got the taser out of his pocket, flicking the safety. He caught up the big battle-axe, setting the haft under his right arm, blade backward. Then he started after Mike at a steady, unhurried pace. The lad had reached the chain link fence that circled the perimeter of the school grounds. Eager but not stupid: noting Spike’s following pace, Mike moderated his own. A little apart, so nothing would easily surprise them both, they were angling toward the next gate, where there’d been motion.  
  
Crossing the weedy lot along the fence, Spike scanned for advantage. With a Biter, you always wanted the option of getting high, adding to your reach. At the street where the lot ended, at right angles to the fence, there were a row of concrete and board benches along the bus loading area. A stout telephone pole with an attached street light presided about midway. Spike pointed and said, “Mark.” The other vampire nodded and headed directly for the gate, to locate the target and possibly draw it toward the chosen site. Pausing to prop the axe against the telephone pole, Spike circled right, into the dead-ended street, using what parked cars remained overnight as cover.  
  
Biters. A pair, standing just outside the gate. Waiting for their chums, maybe. Mike showed himself and at almost that same moment, Spike kicked back against the rear quarter-panel of a sedan, a loud thump, then veered off, retreating fast through the darkness along a line of store fronts. One of the Biters was coming out to investigate the noise by the stores. Which left only one loping along the line of the fence toward Mike, now headed at a medium run back toward the benches. Decent set-up, Spike judged. They should have time to do the one before the other could arrive.  
  
As Mike passed the first bench, the Turok-han barely a pace behind now, Spike stood close against the telephone pole and counted down aloud, “Three, two, one.” On _one_ , Mike dodged aside, and Spike jumped in, and they took the Turok-han from two sides with the tasers. Mike went for the body, which got him slapped off his feet; Spike hit a swinging arm, partly to find out if the charge would be less effective that way. Hard to tell, since the Biter went down on its face as every muscle locked up.  
  
Spike would have preferred to see how long it took the Biter to recover from the charge, but the other one was coming now and would have to be put down fast. Spike waited until the Biter had committed to Mike, then moved aside to not present a single target. Since Mike was closest, Spike let him decide how to make the initial hit and moved when he did. Again, they both hit the second Biter about simultaneously, Spike getting a clear jab at the back ribs, Mike striking someplace else. Spike continued the spin and caught up the axe. Mike stood clear, Spike swung two-handed, and it was a nice, neat beheading. A few paces, just enough time to bring the axe up and over again, and the other Biter exploded into dust, too.  
  
Spike asked, “This one move any?”  
  
“Not that I saw.”  
  
“Good minute, ninety seconds, he was down then. Plenty of time. Come the patrol, figure the vamp should go in first. No great harm there if the Biter takes a swing. And that’d open it up for the children. Team of three, I’m thinking.”  
  
“Team of four. Another vamp for backup, and the kill. Soon as the fucker’s down. I got enough for that.”  
  
“Maybe. Consider it,” said Spike as they retreated across the lot to the side of Willy’s again. He didn’t altogether like the idea of even teams, vamps and SITs, even if only the SITs had tasers.  
  
Sitting on their heels near the loading bay, they did a brief rehash, remarking on the Biters’ apparent reaction time and whether they’d seemed to react more to sight or loud noise, agreeing noise brought them faster and therefore maybe their distance vision wasn’t all that great. Ambush predators, more likely, than something that saw prey from a distance and ran it down.  
  
“Anything else?” Spike asked.  
  
“Well, it stank.”  
  
“Yeah. Could be handy if we get to huntin’ ‘em in the streets. Not much help in the open…. Goin’ inside for something. Whack on the door,” Spike directed, slapping the metal lift door, that resounded like a big metal drum, “then to the mark out front if anything comes at you.”  
  
“Don’t bring an audience.”  
  
“Try not to,” Spike agreed.  
  
He came back with a bottle of bourbon and the big roll of duct tape from behind the bar, kept for general repairs. When Mike declined firsts on the bottle, Spike pulled out a couple feet of tape, sliced it on the axe blade, then taped the taser (prudently safetied) crosswise on his right palm and thumb. He flexed the hand experimentally. Still left the fingers and most of the palm clear for holding the axe or any other weapon. And no chance of dropping or otherwise losing the taser.  
  
That piece of experimental ingenuity deserved a drink.  
  
Returning to sit on the edge of the bay, he observed, “Not precisely a fight. More of an execution. Your lot are gonna end up all wound up an’ with noplace for that to go. Have to figure some way to turn that aside or make a proper fight of it or they’ll turn on my children next thing.”  
  
“They don’t dare,” Mike contradicted in a near growl.  
  
“Fact they shouldn’t, and even know they shouldn’t, doesn’t mean that they won’t. What, you never done something outlandish stupid just because you were all wound up an’ no other way to let it out?”  
  
“No,” said Mike flatly, insulted.  
  
“Then either that’s a lie or you still got a bit to learn about what you are….”  
  
“You callin’ me a liar?”  
  
“Oh, please. All right, you’re not a liar, you’re an idiot. That better?”  
  
Mike glared back at him, both in game face, of course. “I don’t have to put up with that from you!”  
  
“Fine, you take the next one on your own, show me the fine points an’ all. Fucking independent git.”  
  
“Fine, I will then!”  
  
“You do that. Even let you borrow the fucking axe.”  
  
“Don’t need your gear!” Mike declared haughtily, although Spike had spoken of the axe because Mike’s glance had gone to it.  
  
Except for the taser, Mike had shown up empty-handed with nothing for the kill. Which should probably have earned him extra points, like the way Dawn awarded them.  
  
Mike was so busy showing off his bristling alpha dog routine that he didn’t notice the Biter coming in from the other direction, likely all fed up and happy, until Spike pointed. And though it might have been amusing watching the wanker get himself pulled apart, Spike pitched a stake at him from the sack he’d brought the tasers in. Mike saw it coming out of the edge of his vision, quick enough to catch it before seeing what it was.  
  
Spike remarked, “What they got ain’t a proper rib cage. More a layer of chest and back armor. Doubt the axe would go through it. Got to take ‘em up from the belly to get at the heart.”  
  
Mike popped the stake in his palm a couple times, like he was thinking of tossing it back, but wasn’t quite idiot enough for that and stuck it through a belt loop, then jogged off to intercept the Biter. Spike didn’t bother watching. He’d done dumb stuff like that, showing off, when he was about that age. And likely since, he supposed. Only difference, he didn’t play to himself it was anything but what it was. Maybe not smarter but somewhat more honest.  
  
Presently Mike came back, limping just enough to notice, no sign of the stake. Had his hair mussed too, poor child, and a bruise coming along the side of his face. He came straight at Spike and swiped the bottle out of his hand.  
  
After he’d put some down, the younger vamp complained, “Not a real fight. Butchering meat’s more fun. That’s annoying. Near as annoying as you. But nowhere near as annoying as admitting I’m an idiot and I just done exactly what you said.” Grinning and mad at himself, both.  
  
“Wondered if you’d notice that,” commented Spike moderately. “Now I expect one time you could have sat on a ridge or perched in a tree an’ picked off the opposition with a sniper scope all night and been right pleased with yourself, never the least twinge of impatience. Won’t be like that now. Never no more.” Spike slid his hip off the ledge and held both arms straight out, fingers spread. “Vamp ends here.” He swung around, defining an area arm’s reach out from his body. “If you can’t touch it, hit it, drink it or fuck it, you ain’t made contact with it. Inside here, that’s where you live. An’ nothing past that is gonna give you any satisfaction whatever. I liked your grenade. Liked the noise and the fine light it made. But if I had to fight Turok-han with ‘em for any length of time, I’d go after ‘em, hand to hand, fists and fangs, and likely get my head yanked off. Because anything else, that’s just video games, Michael. No blood in it. And no bloody satisfaction. Got to get your hands on it to know it, feel it’s a fight. Or any goddam thing else.”  
  
“Right about that,” Mike allowed, after another pull from the bottle. “Tried one of those arcade games down at the mall, you know? Racked up fantastic points. Better hand-eye coordination than I’d ever had. And nothing. Just dust and ashes.”  
  
“And what’d you do then?”  
  
Mike lifted his face and admitted, “Kicked the damn thing in. Nearly got caught when the alarms went off…. Is that what it’s like? Having a sire? Somebody knows this stuff and teaches it to you, so you don’t have to learn every goddam part of it by trial and error?”  
  
“Not much. Not really.” Having let his arms fall, Spike reached out for Mike to pass over the bottle. Spike sat back on his heels, and Mike hunkered down too. “Maybe some are different. I dunno. Mostly it’s getting hammered to do what you’re told: no more, no less, an’ no different. And mostly no explanations. Just do it. Maybe you figure it out a while afterward. Maybe you never do. Or there was no reason for it to begin with, just an excuse to hammer you down. A lot of times, that’s all it is. I been annoying a long while, Michael. An’ Angelus, he’s a cruel hard bugger an’ always has been and still is, never seen much difference on account of the soul. Not to me, anyways. I dunno which of us had the best of it--you or me. But we’re both here, either because of him or in spite of him. So I expect that’s all you can ask. It’s hard, any way you turn.”  
  
They did a few more Biters, maybe five, and Spike swore when gripping the axe cracked the taser’s housing and ruined it. So taping it hadn’t been such a great idea after all. Trial and error, he thought--that’s all any of them had.  
  
And none on Willy’s property, so not a penny of bounty out of the evening.  
  
And Michael fidgeting around restless and not trying, anymore, to pretend otherwise. That was something, anyway. Taught the boyo something, at least.  
  
Mike asked, “There any more use to this, you figure?”  
  
“No, I don’t expect. One taser’s enough, for a vamp, who can take a little damage at close quarters if need be. Have to be two, for the children. And there’s not sufficient yet to go around, or to replace any that get broke. That’s cutting things a bit fine, but anyway, they work as advertised.” Spike finished cutting and pulling off the last of the tape from his hand and stuck the broken taser in his pocket, just in case it could be repaired.  
  
The younger vampire looked around, both hands stuffed in his pockets. Wide-eyed, wide open expression: just like that Finn. “You figure that’s important, like you said before? To know what it’s like, getting hit with one?”  
  
Spike stared. It was an offer to get tasered, just on Spike’s say-so. “You’re an idiot, Michael. Spend your thought on how to do the other fellow, not on such nonsense as that. Gimme back the toy, now.”  
  
“Oh.” Mike pulled the taser from his back pocket and handed it over.  
  
Except for that, Spike knew the lad would have tried it just the same: done himself, the second he got home or wherever he kept himself. Likeable, a boy as predictably stupid as that.  
  
“No tasers for your lot, this time,” Spike said, collecting the axe. He’d leave it in the store room rather than be lumbered with it. “They’ll have to do with whatever they can, whatever’s to hand. All for the children. Because they’re more breakable.”  
  
“All right. Want to come back to my place and fuck?”  
  
“No, I got something else in mind, and then I’m due back here come midnight. Some other time, maybe. Got the bike, though: could drop you someplace.”  
  
“No, that’s all right.”  
  
**********  
  
Spike cruised to one of the back edges of the extensive parking lot that flanked Sunnydale Mall. Waiting and watching the scatter of parked cars, he lit a cigarette, thinking about what a fine rest he’d had, there in the Magic Box, today noontime. Only a couple of hours, but the first time in months he’d actually wakened feeling rested. No eruptive prescient dreams, nothing expected of him, nothing he’d done wrong somehow while sleeping.  
  
Sleeping with Buffy had its advantages, not that much actual sleeping got accomplished, and he planned to give her a thorough seeing to before the patrol and whatever might happen then; but Dawn’s company was also good in a different way and really restful. He felt a lot more peaceful within himself than he had for a long while.  
  
Since getting the soul, maybe: as long as that. And now he thought about it, the months leading up to that had had their bad moments. Nights. Whole weeks, sometimes. That was when he’d been courting the Slayer, an experience combining the most brilliant shagging ever and bloody bare-knuckle brawls, sometimes both together. Could have done without some of it, but he could never quite decide which part he’d wish gone.  
  
And he thought about Michael’s two offers. Well meant, he supposed, and friendly enough after its fashion, and it’d been awhile since he’d done a boy. But vamp sex meant considerably less than a handshake and Spike truly wasn’t interested in meaningless contact. Not like with the Slayer, when everything he did and didn’t do had meaning. And generally repercussions. Be unsatisfying to have it mean less: dust and ashes, the same as Mike had said.  
  
Even with Dru, it had meant a lot and required considerable figuring and planning what might please her or at least hold her attention long enough to get her finished, much less himself.  
  
And Bit, that he didn’t have to worry about at all that way, who just was. That could be good and even outright splendid sometimes, just _be,_ himself, and no kind of performing required at all. He was glad she didn’t mind, didn’t expect that from him. Hadn’t ever thought she did, except for everybody asking. That had been strange, and he was glad Bit had agreed with him about it.  
  
He noticed right away when somebody came into range. In one way, he was peaceful, knowing very plainly what he was going to do. But in another way he was strung quite tight because it’d been two days and a little now since he’d fed. Could have waited a little longer if he’d had to, hadn’t snapped at any of the children, it was still well within his control. But when food walked within his range, he noticed very sharp.  
  
Pigs’ blood was a true abomination. Worse than meaningless. Barely food at all, hardly any life left in it whatever. Just a way to keep going, deny the unrelenting hunger for actual life that was fundamental to what he was. For years he’d had no choice about it on account of the damn chip. Just reaching could blind him and lay him flat for days. But that was done now and he’d made up his mind to it the same as he’d made up his mind about the tat. Done, accomplished in his mind even before he’d started.  
  
He dropped the cigarette and stepped on it, to not be waving the coal about. Swung his leg over the bike seat and started walking. Woman, shopping bags dragging both arms down. Aiming herself at the green Toyota sedan. Nobody inside, waiting for her. Nobody else about. Spike adjusted his pace and his angle, to meet her before she reached the car. Didn’t want to set off the alarm.  
  
The second he got within striking distance, he went fast and took her: a lot slower than a SIT and not expecting anything besides. Barely jerked, no struggle at all, as he opened her and the incredible first richness of blood hit the back of his throat. Feeding, he let her down and her packages down easy. Took four full long swallows and quit, shuddering with how hard it was to stop but managed to stop anyway, settle himself down enough, hold fast. Licked the bite a few times to finish closing it, then shed game face and began helping her up, finding her car keys and opening the Toyota for her, getting her parcels in the back, explaining to her how she’d fainted right away there in front of him and how she should wait until she was herself again before driving and get something solid to eat inside her as soon as she could, and she no more than nodding and bewildered and likely a little dizzy but he hadn’t taken enough for her to be worse than that.  
  
He couldn’t do thrall but he could do this, be concerned and deliberate and persuasive, especially in Sunnydale where nobody was apt to admit to themselves they’d just been fed on by a vampire. They’d cling onto any other explanation for dear life rather than admit that.  
  
Not even enough to take the edge off, he thought, watching the Toyota’s lights come on and the car start slowly rolling toward the exit. But it was real, alive, and his whole body exulted in it after the endless miserable fast. Pure life, pure meaning, drinking it down. As deep and profound as sex, except that he didn’t love the woman, of course. Didn’t dislike her, either, though. No need to end her, just for the first sip of a meal.  
  
She was truly none the worse for it, any way that he could see. Of course Buffy wouldn’t look at it that way. But Buffy didn’t have to know for awhile yet.  
  
Spike returned to the bike and was quiet there, feeling his proper food transforming inside, better than the finest champagne. Now, after the first taste, he was outright hungry so he’d have to take care with the next one, not to get lost and take too much. Maybe five, six people were gonna faint in the mall parking lot tonight and be helped by a solicitous stranger. And still plenty of time to make it back to Willy’s before midnight.


	9. Section 3: Engagements — On Notice

After breakfast, Willow checked around the house, upstairs and down, and found no anomalous stranger who might be the Dawn, that Buffy had said was back. Willow was curious: the only artificial being she’d ever encountered was the BuffyBot, which could pass for human only if you squinted real hard and didn’t really listen to its chirpy pre-programmed nonsense. By all evidence, this Dawn was an entirely different fettle of kish who’d passed for years, unremarked and accepted. An artifact, a made thing, and yet person enough that an unsouled vampire could become deeply attached, if Willow had the chronology anything like right.  
  
The only other time Willow had seen Spike that agitated was when Drusilla had dumped him and he’d tried to coerce a love spell from Willow to get his undead sweetie back. Big fiasco, of course. You think you have somebody all figured out, a feckless vamp with absolutely no magical affinity, incapable even of a love spell, your basic muscle-head who’d certainly never impressed you with anything resembling blinding intelligence, always trailing lovelorn after some woman or other he’d fixed his pathetic affections on for no discernable reason except that she didn’t want him, and then he goes and pulls off something like this, that Willow herself, a powerful witch, didn’t know how to undertake.  
  
Inexplicable. Vaguely annoying. Intriguing.  
  
Finding no Dawn anywhere around, Willow widened her search. She cut through the back yard and beyond the break in the hedge she found Spike’s contingent of SITs spread out in pairs, engaged in what looked like staking practice.  
  
Sure enough, there was Spike on the shaded porch in conversation with a leggy mid-teen girl with long brown hair whom Willow was quite certain she’d never seen before.  
  
Spike and the Dawn both looked up as Willow approached. Spike said neutrally, “Red,” and the Dawn said cheerily, “Hi, Willow.”  
  
Willow made a smile as she sat on the grass. When she looked up, the Dawn’s expression had changed to wistful and a little pained.  
  
“Sorry,” the Dawn said. “For a minute, I forgot that you forgot. But the upside is, maybe you’ll see how wretched forgetfulness spells really are, like the ones you put on Tara, and everybody.”  
  
Willow couldn’t have been more astonished and indignant if the girl had punched her in the mouth.  
  
“Now, Bit, that’s not nice,” Spike commented.  
  
“Sure, like I’m gonna take Emily Post lessons from the not-so-evil semi-undead,” the girl shot back at him pertly.  
  
“Well, you could consider when even a vamp tells you to mind your manners, chances are you been pretty egregious.”  
  
“ _Egregious_ , that’s a fine word. Right up there with _effulgent_.” Clearly, that was some kind of inside joke, by Spike’s answering expression.  
  
“Well, that could be, too. Anyway it’s not Red’s fault she doesn’t recollect you, an’ she was quite a lot of help in getting you home, so you be nice to her before she turns you slightly into a frog here.”  
  
“She’d never do that,” retorted the Dawn smugly. “She has frog fear.”  
  
Willow’s astonishment and indignation went wide like a huge balloon. What _was_ this creature and how could she know such things about Willow when Willow knew next to nothing about her? Willow felt naked and defenseless, like that bad sort of dream where you were in front of a class or an audience and forgot all your lines, naked and everything and had to hope nobody would notice if you just kept talking. Yet underneath there remained the cool, impersonal curiosity that had wondered what Warren would look like without his skin. That never changed. That still scared her, yanked her back from the brink of actually touching, seizing hold of the currents of power she felt randomly twining and surging around her all the time: currents yearning for direction and guidance; yearning to be used.  
  
That’s what other people didn’t know: that chaotic energy had an intrinsic yen to make sense, yearned for shape and purpose, had a hungry affinity for any strong intention in those attuned to it. As Willow was. Irrevocably. When you used it, it became magic. But as long as you didn’t, it remained only the eddy and flow of undifferentiated unclaimed energy sloshing around like the ocean out of sight of land.  
  
Looking with other vision, Willow examined the Dawn’s aura. It was surprisingly unremarkable--exactly what you’d expect with a healthy girl that age: white-yellow and cheerful, filmy, pretty shapeless and not closely conforming to body contours. The edges were shaded to peach, to pink where her aura and the vampire’s overlapped and fuzzed into each other. Quite an ordinary aura for a girl comfortable with a close friend.  
  
Instead, it was Spike’s aura that was strikingly abnormal.  
  
Since the body was animated by supernatural forces and its merely Natural functions were scaled down and simple, about on the level of your basic garden slug, vampires didn’t generate much of a bioenergy field. The aura was characteristically dark-toned, uniform, and tight to the body contour. Brown-black at rest, shot through with white-yellow streaks in pain or psychological distress, red-black in sullen bloodthirst, and a deep maroon when that thirst had been satisfied. Change only within a narrow range and not much variation from head to foot.  
  
When Spike had suffered a severe injury to his hands, some weeks ago, Willow had used his aura as a diagnostic. Allowing for the injury, it had been about what she would have expected. Since then, she’d had no reason to check it. She was surprised to find it flared wide, nearly across the whole of the porch, and comprised of almost as many flowing hues and shadings as a human’s, instead of the stable vamp monochrome that was typical even for him. The base color was slate blue, most intense around the torso, more transparent and thinner around the limbs, then heavily dark again at the hands, streaked there with small explosions of cerise and vermilion: he’d been killing recently and the energy and effect of that was still apparent in his hands. Deep maroon at the core: he’d fed well not long ago. His aura engulfed the Dawn’s almost completely like a protective bubble, but the overlay was neutral, merely bright: hers was the only color apparent. So the impression was benign, not one of overwhelming, devouring influence.  
  
He’d been messing with quite a lot of aethereal energy, great whacking gobs of it. Had to be the residuum of the Dawn spellcasting. Since becoming able to discern such things, Willow had never seen such an energy-charged aura except on Rack, an active sorcerer; on a vamp it was just ridiculous, disproportionate, like a tuxedo on a pig or a Vibrant Crown on a Chihuahua.  
  
Filing the strange aura for future thought, Willow brought her mind firmly back to the matter at hand, asking, “What exactly did you do to get her back?”  
  
Spike looked aside, obviously deciding whether to answer or not. Finally, he asked bluntly, ‘Why?”  
  
It wasn’t so much a hostile question as one that required a good reason.  
  
Willow spread her hands and offered one of her most upbeat, harmless smiles. “Professional curiosity. Most vamps can’t manipulate magic at all without a heavy-duty talisman or a detailed, pre-formulated spell. And a sacrifice dedicated and shed as the power source. So I wondered what you used.”  
  
Spike returned his attention to the chore he’d been performing: sharpening a stake. A rather peculiar occupation for a vampire, but Willow thought it better not to comment. He said, “Mostly, it was dickering. Not magic. Sort of hard to describe.”  
  
“What did you use to power it?”  
  
“Feelings, mostly. At least that’s all I knew of. Oh, and what remained from the blood spell. That’s all gone now.”  
  
With the place of the conjuration identified, Willow was able to infer some of the mechanics. He’d used the crystals she’d set in the basement, that was obvious, and powered it with the residue of the blood magic. “How did you reconstruct her? How did you make the template, or whatever you used? How do you even make a template for a personality that was a construct to begin with?”  
  
Spike glanced at the girl, then back at his hands. “Don’t believe I care to discuss that, sorry. Maybe sometime Bit can say, if she feels like it.” His face lifted and changed subtly: not quite vamp-face, but not quite human, either. “An’ if you get into my head about this, or about anything without my say-so, I’ll be way beyond annoyed. You get some slack from me for the help, that’s appreciated. But it don’t extend to you getting into my head. Not saying you would, or mean to. Just telling you, so you’ll know.”  
  
Well, Willow hadn’t really expected a vampire to talk sorcerous shop with her. It was entirely possible he just didn’t want to admit he had no clear idea how he’d done it, that he’d fluked out lucky.  
  
And there was little point seeking information from the Dawn, the artifact: she’d probably be the last one to have any idea how she’d been made.  
  
But the possibility of making a convincing simulacrum, a complete living person recreated somehow out of memory, was far too intriguing to be left alone. Willow thought she could interpret and translate from any account, however ill-informed and incoherent.  
  
Offering the Dawn polite congratulations on her return, Willow took her leave, trying to think what leverage, pressure, she could bring to bear on Spike to _make_ him tell.  
  
**********  
  
Watching Willow walk away, Dawn leaned confidingly against Spike’s tatted arm, that was hers. “She thinks you made me.”  
  
“Don’t see that it matters. An’ I don’t think it’s specially wise to claim acquaintance with Lady Gates, to a witch. Don’t think it’s any of her proper business, actually, but you do what you please, Bit.”  
  
“I think she wants Tara back.”  
  
Spike set a finished stake aside and collected a fresh dowel, taking more time in choosing than was really needed. “Could be. You well might be right about that. Tara was a fine girl, an’ they certainly were close. Magic brought them together and then the magic pushed them apart…. Natural she’d miss her, specially now with Kennedy an’ all. Doesn’t begin to measure up. But I think if that could be done by magic, she’d have done it already. Not that I know a whole lot about it.”  
  
“She thinks you do. Even an idiot can have the right answer sometimes.”  
  
Spike smiled and didn’t say anything.  
  
“Seriously,” Dawn said. “She thinks I’m a thing and you’re an idiot, and thinks you have something she really, really wants that you just told her you wouldn’t give her. That would make me nervous if I were you.”  
  
“Don’t believe there’ll be time for her to get up to much mischief. Things are gonna head downhill pretty quick now. Don’t you worry, Bit. No harm coming from that direction and what comes, I’m making for myself, don’t need extra help.”  
  
“You mean the patrol?”  
  
“That, yeah. And some other stuff simmering about. Just glad we got you back all safe before anything more…develops.”  
  
Dawn didn’t like it when Spike was evasive and cryptic. If whatever he had in mind was really chancy, it gave her no opportunity to talk him out of it. Which was probably why he wouldn’t tell her.  
  
They traded a look: bland on his side, suspicious and full of misgivings on hers.  
  
Vampires seemed so fragile to her. One small accident with a pointy stick and poof, they were gone, just like that. Dawn shook her head, frowning, and squeezed his arm so he’d know she wasn’t happy about this.  
  
She said gloomily, “I worry about you sometimes.”  
  
“Only sometimes? Then things must be far too quiet.”  
  
“Idiot.”  
  
“Thing,” he retorted.  
  
“Monster.”  
  
“Undersized harpy.”  
  
She poked him in the shoulder but it didn’t make her feel any better.  
  
**********  
  
A little before midday, after Dawn had gone off, Spike called the children into the house. Not enough shade was left on the porch, and the house had a good-sized front room, space for everybody all together: one reason he’d chosen it. He settled on the floor, and the SITs ranged themselves around, choosing favored places. Over the past weeks, they’d come to feel at home here.  
  
And almost every single one had chosen a taser, chosen the vamp patrol. At least partly because he’d been the one to propose it and ask for volunteers. He felt the responsibility of that.  
  
“Now bear with me,” he said, paying lots of attention to the proper lighting of a cigarette, “because you know all my tricks now, and I don’t know how to say. So it won’t sound like much. But I made you all a promise, and after tomorrow, it can’t be like that anymore. I told each of you I’d keep you from death. An’ so far that’s been all right, we done that. Not just me: you all know that perfectly well. But that was what I said. What I promised. I taught you as best I know, an’ I never once told you anything but what’s true, as best I know. And you all done very fine, learned and done what you could with no shirking and no complaints. So now it’s yours to see to, because I can’t.  
  
“When you’re dealing with other vamps, as you will be, don’t you go by me. I’m real old, and most you’ll run into are hardly past fledges--as young, in the vampire way, as you are in yours. So they’re mostly dumb an’ don’t think about what they’re doing before they do it, and sometimes not even then. You watch ‘em close and watch yourselves and each other. I call you children because that’s how I think of you, but when the Slayer was your age, she’d already been Slayer for a year. She didn’t get much chance to be a child, and you won’t neither. And the fact is, I can’t keep you from death. Only you can. So I give you back to yourselves, to do that.” He held up his spread left hand, like taking a wrong-handed oath. “From my hand, back to your own. To keep yourselves safe--”  
  
Amanda unwound from her seat on the couch and came and took his upraised hand in both hers, which was all right, no great matter, but then she bent and kissed him on the forehead and that upset him, that was more than what was called for. But because Amanda had done it they all wanted to, of course, and turning his head and trying to wave them off made no difference, they were stubborn and it wasn’t what he’d intended at all.  
  
He’d only meant to take proper leave of them and end the promise he could no longer keep. Instead, it felt like forgiveness for whatever he’d not done or done wrong and he’d surely not earned that, not from them. Not from anyone. And there was nothing he could do with a feeling like that, nowhere for it to go. Not at all what a vampire should feel toward such a delicious smelling bunch of children.  
  
So he told them they were stupid bints and got away into the basement the first chance they gave him.  
  
And the worst part of it was that he still had the other pack, nominally Buffy’s, to do it all again with because he’d made them the same promise too, all the SITs. Well, he wouldn’t, that’s all. Now he knew how they were apt to behave, he’d just have Buffy tell them. Totally fucking inappropriate. Tell her when he saw her tonight, make her take care of it because no way was he gonna go through a thing like that twice.  
  
**********  
  
As it happened, Buffy chickened out too and she didn’t think it was fair for Spike to ask her to make an announcement that sounded, to her, really close to, “Goodbye, good luck, now go out and get killed.”  
  
Tonight’s patrol had been called off in favor of a practice. A SIT, Vi, perched on a ladder to approximate the height of a Turok-han, and the rest of the Potentials took turns to swipe and poke at her. Buffy told the leaders of Spike’s troop to pass along that unfortunate hail and farewell to the members of her troop and left it to them.  
  
It had been a really rotten day. When she’d visited him after school, Giles made it clear that he considered any alliance with vampires to be doomed and the equivalent to selling your soul to the Devil. Cheap. The phrase “a shameful expediency” had been used. Then they’d gotten into the whole issue of Spike training the SITs again, something Giles had never approved of: on principle, he insisted, rather than any criticism of Spike personally or of how he’d actually handled it. “But you cannot and must not forget, Buffy, _that he is a vampire!_ He simply cannot perceive the serious moral issues which accepting any vampire as an equal automatically raises. And I must assume, since you have again taken him as your lover, that neither can you.”  
  
And when Buffy had brought up the excuse of the soul, Giles had dismissed it on the grounds that Ethan Rayne’s soul had done nothing to hold him back from malign sorcery. Nor had Willow’s. “The soul, Buffy, is all well and good, and I respect Spike for the attempt. He has done something I never conceived any vampire would do of his own accord. Nevertheless, all anyone has seen from him is insanity and confusion: neither guilt nor anything resembling repentance. A soul is no guarantee of right action for any creature, let alone one naturally so inclined toward evil, violence, and cruelty as a vampire.”  
  
And on and on. Wicked evil soulless demon monster vampire thing, blah, blah, blah. Buffy had ended the rant only by leaving, with the very minimal satisfaction of having virtuously solicited and listened to Giles’ opinion, negative and unhelpful as it was.  
  
She’d had no better luck with Anya, as she explained to Spike, lurking moodily by the hedge, when he asked her about it. Turning together, they ambled along the hedge to the sidewalk while Buffy groused, “All I could do is get Anya to agree to hold it after the patrol, not before. She’s set it up with Willy. Demon-human solidarity, yea rah. Real big honkin’ clue there’s liquor involved. The whole thing is iffy enough without a whole bunch of the vamps, or even the SITs, bombed out of their minds from the get-go.”  
  
“Sorry, pet. Anya gets hold of a thing, sometimes, there’s no stopping her.”  
  
Stopping and starting by an undefined restless inertia, they continued slowly along the sidewalk toward the corner of Brown, where they might turn or not. No choice had to be made right away, just walking.  
  
Buffy said, “And I talked to Giles. No joy there. No surprise, either, I guess. But at least I tried….”  
  
“Rupert doesn’t put much trust in vamps, and we pretty much think alike about that. So I don’t fault him for it. But we’re all out of good choices here, an’ some of the bad ones are worse than others.”  
  
Buffy mentioned, “He doesn’t think you’re sorry enough.” She glanced up and, no surprise, Spike’s face had gone stormy and sullen.  
  
“He don’t know nothing about that. That’s my concern. He can think what he likes.”  
  
Having reached the corner, they hung up under the street light there.  
  
“And to top everything off,” Buffy said, still watching him, “I had another little visit from the First today. Just what I needed.”  
  
“That a fact. Who was it doin’ this time.”  
  
Buffy sighed, a little more choked and shaky than she’d meant. “My mom. Really creepy. All reasonable and concerned.”  
  
“An’ what did it say, Slayer?” Spike prompted, like the set-up line of a joke.  
  
Except the punchline wasn’t funny. Not even a little. “Oh, the usual, how we’re all gonna die, that kind of thing. And…that you’ve been killing again.”  
  
“Ahuh. And are you gonna ask me, pet?”  
  
From _Slayer_ to _pet_ in two sentences. That was almost a record. Buffy pushed at her hair wearily. “When something goes bad, just tell me, all right? I know what it’s doing. But I can’t have that on my mind. Can’t wonder about it. Either I trust you or I don’t. And I do. I have to.”  
  
As she lifted, he bent and they were kissing with fierce intensity. It really had been a wretched day. And the turn onto Brown had been made so they probably both knew where they were headed now.  
  
“That thing,” Spike said. “That you asked the other night, and I said no.” A quick glance to see if she understood. “Maybe I was wrong. If you still want.”  
  
Yet another uncomfortable thing to decide. And yet he’d given in, when she’d been certain he wouldn’t. And it was about trust, after all, and therefore maybe a way to reaffirm and heal it, if healing was needed. Buffy leaned her head against Spike’s arm. “We’re both edgy and tired. Maybe it’s not a good time to try new things. If it’s gonna bother you, let it go. I don’t want to make things hard for you. Not exactly….”  
  
She checked, and that unintended double entendre had won a small, tight smile.  
  
He said, “I want it to be how you want. Whatever that is. Want to make you happy and glow all over, like you do. An’ see it in your eyes, that it’s me you’re with and no other, and glad of that. Don’t want to hold anything back. Want to put my mark on you and make you shout for me when you come, and set all the sorrow aside.”  
  
She checked again, and his face was gentle and intense. Wide and unfathomable, his eyes drew her in as they always did and always had. It seemed to her that his gaze saw her all the way down, as far as she went, and she felt it like that. Heat gathered and a fluttering sensation began as though a bird were trapped deep inside.  
  
She said, “I want you free and joyous and strong, coming to me. I want to be whatever you need me to be. I want you proud and content with yourself because your crazy pieces fit my crazy pieces just right. And know that there’s nobody else I would ever want to be with except you. I want you to explode so hard you feel like you’re coming all apart but you won’t because I’ll hold you safe forever. And I want--”  
  
His mouth stopped her.  
  
They went inside the house, and down.  
  
*********  
  
Their loving had all sorts of moods because it connected to so many things. Sometimes they played with the delays, making a huge production and argument over the removal of clothes, and who was allowed, and what stayed nonsensically, even inconveniently, on. Sometimes quite a lot of it was talk, skeptical, daring one another, sassy backtalk and pretended haughtiness, pushes and slaps and the occasional elbow going abruptly astray against something sensitive, provoking pretended startlement, injury, and retaliation, back and forth, tit for tat. And sometimes there were no words at all, nearly like one of their old battles: because they could, and they were both deeply into the body and that was best sometimes, punishing and sudden. Other times were silly and teasing, extreme tickling, and having to stop for the laughter. And some times were indescribably intense and a little slow, their eyes on one another most of the time, watching, conversing with touch and pressure and long repetitions that became nearly unendurable before they changed and shifted, always watching. Eyes shutting because it was so good you had to try to draw it in and hold it, keep it like held breath, became an event all by itself.  
  
This was one of the intense, slow times. No play in it, clothes carelessly discarded without fuss, and then skin contact, amassing the first slow frictions until there was noplace that wasn’t alive and aching for harder pressure, more contact. He could make her crazy holding her just slightly off balance, never quite secure, always trying unconsciously to right herself. He’d told her once that was like music: dissonances, off tempos, and then the great major chord to declare. She tumbled and was tumbled back, suspended, shuddering, being readied for that declaration.  
  
More than usual he required her attention, lifting her chin and waiting for her eyes to find focus, come out of their daze and greet him before he’d resume. Breathing deep in a heavy rhythm as he did when aroused as though that was somehow hardwired into him, the unnecessary breath, so she always knew and felt it in him, more persuasive and intimate than the more obvious signs because it was so peculiarly his own.  
  
Another thing she felt in him was old, recognized and resisted for so long: his generosity. He gave her beautiful smiles when her breath began to hitch and he noted and displayed to her evidences of her arousal as though they were achievements to be proud of, as though she were doing something astonishing and splendid of her own brilliance. There was in him, at such times, no vanity at all and a giving so complete and self-forgetful it seemed to her a kind of innocence and infinitely precious. And in the moment when everything balanced, collided, and convulsed, shock upon shock roaring through her, he called her wonderful names and encouraged her and kept the shocks rolling beyond what she thought she could endure, and then gentled and petted her for as long as it took her to come back within her body from wherever the convulsions had flung her. Cool against her heat, making a cradle for her with his body, everything softly balanced now and at rest as long as she wished it to be.  
  
But he hadn’t changed. And he was still unsatisfied.  
  
She touched him intimately and asked a half-frowning question with her eyes. His answer was to gently move from under her and pad across to the bureau. She knew then what he’d gone for and sat on the edge of the bed. Returning, he spilled into her lap the four silk scarves used for tying. So as not to disturb her he circled the bed and from that side stretched out flat on his back, arms extended toward the corners of the big bed, waiting.  
  
Buffy picked at the scarves uneasily. This wasn’t how she’d visualized it. The tying and surrender had their place but she hadn’t thought of them in conjunction with his changing. It was too much like the manacles he’d subjected himself to in her basement. To control him when he couldn’t control himself. It wasn’t what she’d meant.  
  
When she looked around at him, he was staring at her, already golden-eyed. Still waiting. She understood then that this was his condition. He required it of her to do as she’d asked. It meant something to him, and this was part of it. So perhaps it would be all right anyway. Under other circumstances it had been acceptable and good, a fulfillment of what they’d needed from each other at that time. Slowly she wrapped around his left wrist the confining hitch that would neither tighten nor give, then fastened the remainder of the scarf securely to the thick brass corner post he probably could yank out of the frame if he truly tried. Then she did the same to his left ankle. A sudden pang of tenderness and concern made her stop and kiss him hard, reaching wide herself to entangle their fingers, reassure them both that this was no harm, only a chosen limit.  
  
He told her softly, “It’s all right, love. Get to it now before I perish entirely.”  
  
He brought down the other wrist to where she could reach and bind it, and she finished securing him with no further intermissions. She looked around then, and the golden eyes had faded back to cobalt.  
  
He said, “When it’s time. Come to me now.”  
  
The way of bondage was to tease the dumb reflexes. Make him need and try to move when the bonds prevented it. It was, in its way, the complimentary state to her being kept off balance, fooling the muscles with the deep suspicion of falling. Pit the restrained body against itself, overload with sensation and thereby set the rest free.  
  
He had no responsibilities in this. He had ceded control of his body. He lay quiet, his eyes shut now so that every touch would come from nowhere, unexpected, and no warning of a repeat or a change unless she chose to give that to him.  
  
She started with simple kissing, close long contact, barely enough to make him breathe. Presently, reaching out high and low, she began an irregular series of touches, grazes, flick and gone almost before he could react. She knew where his sensitivities were and began setting them off, no pattern to it, nothing to anticipate so everything aware and waiting. Involuntary jerks in reaction now, drawing hard on the silk, muscles beginning to fire off and not fully relax before the next shock came.  
  
She began giving him heat: the heat of her mouth and her hot breath and the occasional but steady press of her hot hands. Touching him less the more he reacted. Making the flesh yearn toward her, unable to reach, unable not to try: impulses at odds with one another, heightening sensation, in aching suspense.  
  
When she thought the rhythm of his breathing was about right she descended on his mouth with a devouring kiss, preventing him from getting any air at all. He didn’t need it, but that was another reflexive motion frustrated, tied, fighting for release. The control he’d surrendered to her was itself erotic: the awareness of power, the immediacy of what she could make him do with her hands and her mouth and teeth, her drifting hair trailed across slowly or slapped sudden and hard. With her weight now, the whole of her body raking across him only slightly lubricated by her sweat. Therefore friction, that she now needed herself, aroused and wanting, knowing he smelled that and was dragged by that to try to hold her still but she wouldn’t be still, moving and touching everywhere except where he wanted her.  
  
At the first touch to his center his reaction nearly flung her off the bed. His eyes were finally open and wide-golden with no sense in them, flickering, absent: the only focus internal. The full true face emerged: what he’d always withheld before. Now it was there because she’d called it forth, it had answered her, terrible and beautiful and strange, the fanged mouth open, desperate to pull in enough breath. The body also changed but more subtly, appreciable only by touch and by the quicker, more insistent responses.  
  
He was close, and she wanted him inside her when his release hit. She found her balance, kneeling. Then she quickly took him in. Both of them arched and shuddered. Almost immediately the first of the convulsions hit her: straining together and yet straining away, deep rhythmic shudders tightening in ecstatic waves. A lurch and then his chest lifted. A freed hand tangled in her hair and yanked her forward to meet the wide rising jaws and the fangs that buried themselves in her neck.


	10. Section 3: Engagements — Crisis of Conscience

“Dawn. Wake up. Dawn. Bit.”  
  
It was the tone of voice that brought Dawn straight upright in bed, trying to smear the sleep out of her eyes.  
  
“Dawn. You got to come now. Please. Can’t, didn’t know, it’s all gone wrong--”  
  
The last time Dawn had heard that disjointed mutter it had been coming through the high school ventilation system.  
  
Dawn went into emergency mode, rolling out of bed and finding the switch of the bedside lamp as part of the same motion.  
  
The light wasn’t fast enough to catch him. Just a glimpse of his bare back disappearing into the hallway. Dawn jammed a foot into one of her sneaks and kicked to find the other one, then hopped, treading on flopping laces, to grab yesterday’s hoody sweatshirt off a chair. Scuffing the sneaks on while yanking the sweatshirt over her head, she dashed down the stairs, holding the handrail in case she tripped on the laces.  
  
In jeans and nothing else, Spike walked lopsided figure eights in the downstairs hall. Before Dawn could reach him he was gone again: out through the kitchen and across the yard. Racing after, Dawn caught up past the hedge and grabbed at his wrist, but he yanked away from her, then stumbled and almost fell, down on one knee. She latched on again.  
  
“Quit that,” she told him when he tried to pull away. “This is mine. Show me, Spike.”  
  
Still talking to himself but on no breath, Spike staggered upright. Making no further attempt to dislodge her, he continued into the house, Dawn trotting alongside and trying to notice everything.  
  
He was shaking, continuous vibration, moving in a series of lunges as though he was going faster in his mind than his body could manage and he kept having to wait for it to catch up. No smell of liquor, so he wasn’t drunk. By the basement door he came to a halt, swaying, saying something but again no breath, no audible words. But it was plain he wanted her to go down and didn’t intend to go with her.  
  
“No, you have to show me. Go on, now.” As if she’d let him out of her sight in such a state. Not for a second. “What’s happened to Buffy, Spike?” Because that had to be it, or part of it. “Show me.”  
  
He let her bully him down the stairs ahead of her. She automatically hit the switch, expecting a bare bulb. Instead it was muted track lighting. Carpeted floor, a wall of built-in cabinets, actual furniture. Way upscale compared to his crypt.  
  
As Dawn paused, looking, Spike went straight on to a substantial brass bed, left from the stairs, projecting from the wall. Its mattress was tilted because the right corner post had been pulled away from the crossbar. On it, Buffy was asleep on her side: knees slightly bent and feet apart, hands laid by her face, hair spread about. No clothes. Nothing gross showing. More like a layout in one of those magazines Dawn wasn’t supposed to know about. Nothing visibly amiss except the strange dance of approach and retreat Spike was doing on the far side of the bed. Reaching for the sheet rucked up at the foot, to cover her maybe, then jerking the hand back and spinning away, then back again, reaching, touching nothing.  
  
Only a little hesitantly, Dawn touched, and Buffy’s shoulder was warm. She was breathing OK. Except for being asleep and naked of course, if that counted, nothing Dawn could see to have thrown Spike into incoherent panic.  
  
So it had to be something she couldn’t see.  
  
Dawn thought for a second of waking Buffy so there’d be both of them to deal with this, but changed her mind when she got her first good look at Spike’s face. His eyes were wide and shocky. From second to second they changed between stages of not-quite-blue and not-quite-gold, averaging a muddy dull green. When Dawn went around the foot of the bed to take his arm, he jerked, startled and uncomprehending. Dawn got between him and the bed, interrupting his view, and that let her back him into a heavy wood armchair against the wall. A push got him down in it. She set her hands on the chair arms, boxing him there.  
  
“Spike, breathe. You can’t talk if you don’t breathe.”  
  
For a moment, no reaction. Then, “Right. You stay with her then. I didn’t know. You tell her I didn’t know, didn’t mean. That’s all right then.”  
  
He was up again, pushing heedlessly past. She chased him and got to the stairs first because he’d stopped to go through his pockets. What bills and small change he came up with, he pitched on the floor, just getting rid of it, muttering on no breath. When he was sure there was no more he came on to the stairs and again seemed startled to find Dawn there, blocking the way.  
  
“Bit, got to go now. Can’t be here.”  
  
“First you have to tell me what’s wrong.”  
  
He looked around to the bed and started toward it, then spun back as though he’d smacked into a disinvite spell that wouldn’t let him past. Caught between conflicting impulses, he dropped to sitting on the floor, bent forward with his arms wrapped defensively over the back of his head. He was saying something. As Dawn cautiously left her position, she thought it was _No_ repeated compulsively over and over.  
  
She didn’t dare sit with him because he could move faster than she could and she was quite certain if he got past her and up the stairs, she’d never see him alive again. She compromised, going down on one knee, and took good hold of his wrist so she’d have some warning if he moved. His skin seemed cold, even for a vampire. Still shaking deep inside. Really shocky.  
  
“Tell me what’s wrong, Spike. Breathe first.”  
  
“Well, I fed off her, didn’t I? An’ it should have been all right, tried it out an’ everything, no harm, she’ll be fine and she even said. Can’t be here. You just look after her, she’ll be fine except.”  
  
“Except what?”  
  
“Didn’t know it would feel like this, did I? No idea whatever. Wrong, Bit. Wrong, wrong, bloody hell, she said an’ I come up at her, just as fine as the dream, all sorts of fine an’ she’d even said but she didn’t know, not really. An’ I didn’t know, didn’t know it’d be like this, not the least fucking clue--”  
  
“Spike, do I need to call an ambulance. Transfusion. Like before.”  
  
“--no harm, I thought, no bloody harm. Set my mark on her like Drac, like fucking Angelus, an’ I said and she didn’t tell me no, didn’t say I wasn’t to but she didn’t know. Hurts. Hurt her again. Can’t be here when she wakes, no, can’t do that.”  
  
Despite Dawn’s attempt to be ready, vampire agility and swiftness still took her by surprise. He was up and already on the stairs before she could rise and turn. From the sweatshirt’s front pouch she took and armed the taser. A jump and a long lunge, reaching as high and as fast as she could, she hit the back of his right leg. His fall, collapsing back down, took her legs out from under her. She flopped forward, the edges of the steps sharp and painful. Spike ended up sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. At least it was carpet and not cement, and he looked more dazed than hurt. Not knowing how long one hit would keep him down, Dawn put the business end of the taser against his throat and hit him again. His eyes rolled up white and she was reasonably sure he’d be down at least long enough to get him secured some way.  
  
Rummaging through bureau drawers, she found a cache of silk scarves right next to a collection of thongs and panties that certainly weren’t his, even if she hadn’t known he went without. What he went without certainly wasn’t _that_. Forcing her eyebrows down, she grabbed a handful of the scarves with the vague recollection that the tensile strength of silk compared fairly well to that of steel cable. Considering options, she dragged another of the armchairs, easier to move than he was, out from the wall and then lifted, pushed, tipped and slid him into it, and Girl Scout training was never wasted. She knew how to find north and she could do clove hitches with her eyes shut. Bent to tie his ankle to the chair leg, she saw a different-shaped glint among the spilled change: the bike’s ignition key. She pocketed it. And as a further just-in-case, she added a square knot on top of each hitch, then took a moment to consider the result. If the chair itself held, he was there until somebody released him.  
  
If the chair held.  
  
She carefully lifted his head to check his eyes. Still out, OK. Having laid the taser on the floor to do the tying, she stooped to retrieve it, setting the safety before slipping it back into the sweatshirt pouch.  
  
He’d given it to her in the Magic Box. So like him to have put one aside for her, regardless of other plans, other purposes, to keep with her at all times in case things went bad. So strange to have this be her first use of it.  
  
Well, this was conditionally OK, should hold awhile: long enough for her to get backup.  
  
Since there was only the one floor, it didn’t take Dawn long to find the bedrooms. She poked her head into two before she located Amanda, the most level-headed of the Potentials, and woke her, not caring whether she disturbed the two other SITs sharing the bed. Amanda would see to whatever was needed.  
  
“’Manda. It’s important.”  
  
“What? Oh…. Dawn?”  
  
“You don’t recall, but you and I were good friends once, all right? You had a cocker spaniel named Dirt and he got hit by a car when you were ten and the vet said they buried him but they really didn’t, he went into the furnace. I really know.”  
  
Sitting up and pushing the covers aside, Amanda had an all-over shudder, waking up. “OK, I got that.”  
  
“There’s been a thing in the basement. Nobody really hurt that I can tell, but Spike’s gone all weird about it. Get who you need and get on the basement door. Whatever happens, don’t let him past you. Especially not after sunrise.” Dawn showed the taser. “I took him down with this. How long does a hit last?”  
  
“On a human, ten, fifteen minutes depending on body mass. On a vamp, maybe half that.”  
  
“I hit him twice.”  
  
Amanda gave her a slow, blinking look that reminded Dawn somehow of Tara. “All right. Good. That gives us time, then.” She got up and started getting dressed. Over her shoulder she asked, “Anything else?”  
  
“I don’t know yet. I’m going back now.”  
  
At the door, Amanda’s voice caught her: “He knew something was coming.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Reaching for a T-shirt, Amanda continued thoughtfully, “Last night he said goodbye to us, or as good as. Didn’t say why, but that’s what it was. And then at the Magic Box…well, you saw. Mostly he keeps us all in his head, no problem. But he’d lost us, forgot us half the time. Couldn’t manage anything beyond one-on-one. We wondered about that, after. I don’t remember ever seeing him so distracted.” Slight quirk of an un-smile. “Not that my memory is obviously apt to win any competitions.”  
  
“It’s OK. I just got edited out. I’ll explain later, if you want. You noticed, and I didn’t. Deduct major points for that. All I saw was him vamp-faced nearly the whole time.”  
  
“Yeah, there’s been more of that lately. Maybe we should talk. Compare notes. After, because we both should go.”  
  
One of the other SITs, Kim, sat up all bedheaded and yawning, asking Amanda what was up. Dawn didn’t wait any longer to get back downstairs. Spike was still out, that situation stabilized for the moment, so Dawn went to see to Buffy.  
  
Dawn now knew what was wrong: Spike had fed on her. Since she wasn’t dead, the only question was whether Buffy would wake up, or the Slayer.  
  
Dawn still had the taser. She’d take the Slayer down too, if necessary, until the whole thing could be sorted out. She checked her watch: just past two. Plenty of time still before daybreak.  
  
Adults could be such idiots. And vamps. And guys in general. Spike in particular. Not to mention Slayers. Much over sixteen-and-a-half, something kicked in and rendered them all insane. The best thing would be to tie them both down and _make_ them talk. It was all so stupid.  
  
Sniffing and rubbing impatiently at her eyes, Dawn shoved at her sister’s shoulder.  
  
***********  
  
From a long way off, Buffy felt somebody trying to make her wake up, which she very much didn’t want to do. She didn’t think she’d been dreaming, not exactly. Just in some pleasant post-coital drifting place, very soft and deep. But the pest wouldn’t let her drift, pinches even, and that was really annoying but it wasn’t Spike, and who could possibly be pinching her?  
  
She had to wake to find out, waving and slapping vaguely. It came to her dimly that it was Dawn trying to shake her to alertness, very extremely dizzy sitting up and terribly thirsty. She licked her lips and announced muzzily, “Thirsty.” Dawn let her alone, maybe to go get something for her to drink, and sometime around then Buffy realized she had no clothes on and bumped around trying to find them. She hadn’t known the track lighting worked, Spike always just used candles, and that should make things easier to find but it didn’t, far too bright and glaring. A hangover, she thought, locating her top by color on the floor by the bureau. She bumped into a chair, and Spike was in it, tied down and unconscious, and that was seriously odd but first she needed to get some clothes on, anybody might come in and find her like this, highly embarrassing.  
  
With a shirt and a pair of the spare underwear from the top drawer, Buffy felt a little more secure--specifically, less naked--noticing in buttoning the shirt that the collar felt harsh against the side of her neck, which didn’t exactly hurt: a slight dull ache, and tingling like the beginnings of sunburn. Oversensitized somehow. She was rubbing at it when Dawn came trotting back down the stairs with a glass full of the most wonderful cold delicious orange juice Buffy had ever tasted. She finished the glass in about four long gulps and handed it back, saying, “More.”  
  
Dawn turned and called up the stairs, “Bring the whole thing,” staying by the chair, one hand holding the glass, the other one poked into the front pouch of her sweatshirt. Below the sweatshirt, only long bare legs and sneakers. No pants. Pants were important. Certainly customary.  
  
Buffy spotted her jogging pants by a wall-mounted cabinet and found that really extraordinarily wonderful juice she wanted more of had made some of the dizziness back off. She could bend over to retrieve the jogging pants without having to hold onto anything this time. But standing on one foot to get them on was something she wasn’t ready to attempt yet. She leaned against the cabinet, holding the jogging pants dangling in one hand and rubbing at her neck with the other.  
  
Dawn brought more juice. Buffy drank that more slowly because it was very cold and made her sinuses twinge. And that in turn started to drive back the fog like wind off the mountains.  
  
Her neck felt strange. That brought up a very clear image of Spike coming up at her in vamp-face and biting her. All right, that connected. And she guessed that was why he hadn’t wanted to turn for her. Why hadn’t he just explained clearly that that was part of the package? She thought over what he’d said, the other night, and in retrospect it was clear that he’d known: that was what he’d meant about it all being one thing. So why hadn’t he just said so? And knowing, why had he changed his mind? And why had somebody tied him down to a chair like the worst of the bad old days?  
  
Putting the empty glass on a small cabinet, Buffy wandered back to the chair and started undoing the top knot holding one of Spike’s wrists. Another hand closed around hers and stopped her. Frowning, Buffy looked up, wondering why Dawn was getting in the way.  
  
“He freaked,” Dawn said bluntly. “Totally lost it. Until you tell him you’re not mad, assuming you’re not, I wouldn’t trust him anywhere near an open door in the daytime. Some way, you got to make this right with him, Buffy.”  
  
Buffy’s head cleared still further, and her frown intensified. “ _I_ have to make it right with _him?_ Explain that to me, please. _I’m_ the one who got turned into a midnight snack.”  
  
“All right, I’ll put it a different way. Which is more important to you: getting snacked on a little, because you’re certainly not dead here and it didn’t have to be that way, or Spike? The man is out of his fucking mind about this, Buffy, and I mean that literally. Out. Of. His. Fucking. Mind.”  
  
Buffy wondered if Dawn had always been this much of a pain. Probably. Although Buffy lacked details, the feeling of wanting to crush her like a bug seemed very familiar.  
  
Absently, she asked, “Did I used to wash out your mouth with soap a lot?”  
  
“Never.” Suddenly Dawn’s face crumpled and she was crying, which Buffy found uncomfortably upsetting. “Nor Mom either. But Mom was gone before I needed to learn Spike-speak. I miss Mom. She never wanted to hurt him. Except for the axe, and that was like forever ago and she didn’t know him then.”  
  
“Mom never knew him. Not really. And why do you think I want to hurt him?”  
  
“You mean you don’t?” Dawn asked, suspicious and hopeful.  
  
“Snacking is out. Biting of any sort is out of bounds, if it involves teeth. Fangs. Way out.”  
  
Dawn smeared snot across her face with a fist and lifted her chin challengingly. “Did you ever tell him so? In so many words?”  
  
The fact was that she hadn’t. Such things didn’t need to be actually said, it was ridiculous. But she hadn’t, that was true.  
  
“He knew,” Buffy said flatly and with certainty. “But I’m willing to call it an accident. Maybe. Really bad communications. And nothing new about that.”  
  
Spike could talk for five minutes before he’d cough up the noun, the thing he was actually talking about. And there was also the fact that she’d asked him to show her. Dumb maybe. Ignorant. But she _had_ asked him. And he _had_ insisted on the scarves.  
  
And there was always the fact that she had this thing for vampires. A certain amount of potential biteyness inherent in that. A certain built-in Land Shark potential.  
  
At least he hadn’t lost his soul and decided to kill everybody she cared about.  
  
So far.  
  
God, she hated it that things got so complicated!  
  
Her sister, whom she didn’t know and who might not even be human anymore, was all wound up in dread that she’d stake her boyfriend, a vampire. _What’s wrong with this picture?_ Buffy thought.  
  
“OK, conditionally, an accident. So why’s he in the chair? What’s the matter with him?”  
  
Dawn showed a wincing face and hands hesitantly flapping at shoulder level. “I tasered him a little. Twice. To keep him from leaving. Thus the chair, ditto. You got to talk to him, Buffy. He was waaay beyond upset. It was really hard getting anything out of him because he kept forgetting to breathe.”  
  
“OK, I get the picture.” Buffy decided that if she held onto the back of the chair with one hand, she might attempt the jogging pants with the other. She searched for the label that would tell her which side was the back. “All right, Dawn, you rang the big bell and the cavalry is here now. Your presence is no longer required. Time for the grown-ups.”  
  
“Triple no! Quadruple no! You’re not the cavalry, I am. And I’m here for the duration. Not budging here! And if you go all Slayer on me, I’ll…I’ll make you sorry!”  
  
At last all pantsed and secure, Buffy folded her arms. “Dawn. Out.”  
  
“No squared! No cubed and whatever is beyond cubed double tripled!”  
  
“No French toast for you. But I certainly know you’re my sister. Same great vocabulary skills. Go upstairs, at least.”  
  
“No. Really. Sorry, but I don’t trust either of you right now not to screw things all up. I’m staying. Just consider me your friendly neighborhood referee. With a taser.” And Dawn had the gall to display it, with very slight embarrassment, on the flat of her hand. And Buffy thought she’d really use it: after all, she’d used it on demigod of Hotness Spike. She wouldn’t scruple for bedraggled through-the-wringer permanent wrinkle Buffy.  
  
Agreeing tacitly to the standoff, Dawn tucked hand and taser back into the sweatshirt pouch, and Buffy tried to determine how much longer Spike was apt to be out, before they could get this settled.  
  
**********  
  
Spike had been listening to them bicker for what seemed quite awhile. Dawn’s voice, and Buffy’s. So that was all right then. She was, anyway. Dismiss that, then. Maybe he could have moved. Hadn’t tried. Didn’t care.  
  
Most of it had played out about as he’d expected. What he hadn’t expected was how it hurt. Nothing as distinct as a headache. Nothing that seemed to have any limit or a foreseeable end. Just absolute wrenching wretchedness so that continuing one more minute seemed a complete and utter waste of time. Fetch Dawn to see to her and then get out, go anywhere, set a fire, something. Not even wait for the sunrise, what was the point of that? Just go. Be done.  
  
Had to be the soul.  
  
Mostly he’d been indifferent to it. It had been the thing apparently required of him, so he’d done it, stuck it out, gotten the damn thing. A very few times, maybe twice, he’d taken some small obscure pride in it because it seemed to mean something to the Scoobys. Even Giles. Even Buffy occasionally seemed impressed and didn’t beat him up nearly as often as before. Accepted him as the official acknowledged boyfriend cum enforcer, which he’d never thought she would. Do Angel one in the eye, whenever he chanced to find out. Seemed a good idea at the time.  
  
Hadn’t liked the craziness much, everything all stirred up and unsettled, the two souls, human and demon, having it out back and forth, but he’d thought they’d pretty much finished that, settled the boundaries, declared a truce or some such, some months back. Figured the soul was nothing much he had to take into account anymore, like the dysfunctional chip.  
  
Well, he’d been wrong. And if this was the way it was going to be, he just wanted it ended. He was so fucking sick of being wrong, and yet he’d had no idea doing something perfectly sensible could make him feel wrong not just to others, which he was used to, but to himself. That was a whole different thing. Then you had noplace at all to stand and noplace to retreat to.  
  
He’d had his turn at playing by the human rules, being mostly polite and patient with everybody no matter what kind of idiots they were. So what, if none of it was actually real or made any sense. He could learn the rules and do that, at least for awhile. Do the required tricks, what everybody seemed to want and accept from him. When that got old, it wasn’t much to let go, do another thing. He’d shed skins before and always traveled light. Nothing he had that he couldn’t do without. Except for Buffy. And except for Dawn. So he’d stayed with the tricks longer than he could actually bear.  
  
But seeing the end of that coming, he’d planned out how it should go, a way Buffy could shed herself of him and be pretty much reconciled, figure she was right and get on with it with no great regrets. He’d told Giles: he’d lose it on his own terms before he’d let Angel take it all away. Hadn’t quite figured out Dawn yet, how to see to her, but he’d thought a way would come to him, only could do so many things at a time.  
  
But if he couldn’t even be a proper vampire anymore, if the tricks and the rules and now the awful gut-wrenching misery when he broke them was all there was, then that was it, there was nothing left worth staying for.  
  
A hundred, a thousand times worse than the chip.  
  
No wonder so few vampires got souls. Far fewer than humans who drank poison on purpose. Vampires had more sense. Himself excepted, of course.  
  
**********  
  
After about half an hour, Buffy knocked on Spike’s forehead. “I know you’re in there. No point hiding, Spike. And no need. If I was gonna dust you, I would have done it already.”  
  
His eyes opened. More than anything, he looked bored. As if he wasn’t really paying attention. A look that said _Yeah, what is it now?_ and didn’t really care about the answer.  
  
Buffy went on, “Just to get it said: no more biting. Ever. All right?”  
  
“Sure. Get me loose of this now.”  
  
“I’m willing to call it an accident, it was a little more than, than either of us expected,” Buffy said, uncomfortably aware of Dawn behind her, “and things got a little out of hand. But nobody’s dead, and I guess it was a bad idea. Very bad idea, but I didn’t know. And now I do.”  
  
“Good you got that settled. Get this off me.”  
  
Buffy was reminded of the first stage of the trip down to L.A. He’d made noises like he was actually there but he really wasn’t. A whole different scenario playing out for him than anything she’d known or could have known.  
  
Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to take off the restraints just yet. Until she was sure he was really here and not off someplace inside his head.  
  
Dawn had picked up on it too because she came and knelt at the side of the chair. She pushed her hand under Spike’s and clasped it but she might as well have been holding the chair arm. His fingers didn’t move and he didn’t look at her.  
  
Dawn said to him, “I bet it’s the soul. Isn’t it.” _Then_ he looked at her. Just a flick of a glance. Dawn said, “I thought so. What’s it doing now?”  
  
“Doesn’t matter. Get this off me.”  
  
“So you can do what?” Dawn said, about as sympathetic as a pointed stick.  
  
“Doesn’t matter. Just do it.”  
  
When nobody moved to untie him, the chair creaked. With steady, almost invisible force, no straining or yanking, he was pushing his arms outward. One of the chair arms cracked off the back and then off where it connected to the seat. That arm, of his, completely free although still attached to the wood. Dawn showed him the taser: practically under his nose. And they stared at each other.  
  
With that free arm, he could have broken her in pieces or simply whacked her into a wall. Maybe Buffy could have stopped him but probably not, probably not until after. And they all knew that. And then they all knew that he didn’t because he couldn’t and Dawn’s taser therefore was the power here.  
  
Dawn said steadily, “Don’t make me do you again. What do you need, to talk to me, Spike?”  
  
He began picking out the knot in the scarf binding his right wrist. Then he slid that scarf off and dropped it. It took him a little longer to undo the scarf from his left wrist, which let the broken chair arm fall.  
  
He said, “You do me if you want. Doesn’t matter. Don’t care.”  
  
“What’s the soul doing, Spike.”  
  
They were, Buffy thought, going after each other like a couple of vampires. No softness, no give. Absolutely relentless. Suddenly Buffy couldn’t listen to that anymore. She leaned past Dawn, leaned past the taser, put her arms around his back and gathered him in. For awhile she was holding him. Then indefinably that changed and he was being held, too. A different way his weight rested, maybe. Something she simply felt and knew. After a longer while, he started breathing and bent his head against her shoulder, and his spread hands settled on the small of her back.  
  
“Can’t do this no more.”  
  
Dawn prompted, “Do what, Spike?”  
  
“None of this. All the sense run out of it. Doesn’t none of it make sense.”  
  
And Buffy understood that perfectly. She knew exactly how that felt. The time after her resurrection, when he’d been all she could hang onto and all she could afford to hit. When he’d been absolutely the only thing that made any sense at all.  
  
From that realization she told him softly, “We’re the sense. It’s noplace if it isn’t here. Do we still make sense to you.” That he didn’t answer didn’t necessarily mean no. She understood that too. She thought, and said, “Way out on the far edge of nothing, where it’s all dark except for the fires.”  
  
That was what she’d come into, after clawing her way out of her grave. That was what it had looked like: the streets, empty except for the nightmare bikers. When she’d been certain this was hell.  
  
He murmured, “I can’t be but what I am. And that’s a vampire. Never gonna be nothing different from that. And if that’s wrong, I’m wrong, and there’s no mending it. Don’t know how to do, anymore. None of it. Dunno how to be that wrong.”  
  
Buffy took that thought and turned it: was it possible for there to be a right way to be a vampire? And if there wasn’t, if just being meant being wrong, how the hell could anybody live like that?  
  
She thought, _You came back wrong._ Yeah, she knew a whole catalogue about how it felt to believe you were fundamentally wrong.  
  
She told him, “I see part of it. Give us time and we’ll see the rest of it. You can’t be wrong because you’re the one I want. And I wouldn’t want you the same, or as much, if you weren’t a vampire. I know that. So that much makes sense to me. There has to be a good way for you to be. And still be a vampire. What you are. Keep on a little longer and we’ll find it. I promise.”  
  
“All right.”  
  
He didn’t believe her. But that was good enough for now. That was enough, she thought, to keep him out of the daylight.  
  
She asked, “You gonna help with the patrol tonight?”  
  
Long silence. “Yeah. That comes next. Figured to do that.”  
  
Nothing if not persistent, Dawn asked, “What’s the soul doing, Spike?”  
  
“Dunno. Hurts. I think…it hates me.”


	11. Section 3: Engagements — Working Conditions

Ending the hall watch developed into a conference and then into a proposition. Then a deputation had to run back to Casa Summers to summon and work out any disagreements, pretty much like the Senate and the House except that the numbers were about even between the two troops. Not too bad for half past three in the morning, in Dawn’s opinion.  
  
Bouncing two steps down the basement stairs, Dawn called, “Everybody decent?”  
  
Simultaneously Buffy’s and Spike’s voices replied respectively, _Yes_ and _No_ , and both of them sounded irascible, which Dawn interpreted as matters being about as she’d left them. She nodded an all-clear back to everybody in the hall and then trotted the rest of the way.  
  
At the bottom she tried for a pleasantly neutral, noncommittal expression, but it was hard because they were going to totally freak, both of them, and she couldn’t wait to see their faces when they heard it. Meanwhile the SITs, all twenty-seven of them, were coming down behind her.  
  
The far end of the basement was fitted out with that suburban necessity, a conversation pit, probably as compensation for having no hot tub. Two big curved couches and a smaller one, all in shades of sage with blue piping, set into a lowered circle about eight feet across. Dawn had noticed it earlier. So she’d named it as the mark, and all the SITs went there and found places to sit on the couches or the carpeted edges except for Amanda, who stayed by Dawn, as was appropriate for the chosen spokesman. Spokesperson. Speaker of the Law. Whatever.  
  
Peering cautiously into the bed end of the basement and finding Buffy and Spike both standing there reasonably clothed, whatever they might have been doing before Dawn called, Amanda said, “We want to talk to you.”  
  
Buffy responded a little skeptically, “All right,” and started toward the designated gathering place.  
  
Not budging, Spike said flatly, “What about?”  
  
“Come and find out,” Amanda replied, which was exactly right because you shouldn’t reward him when he was being tiresome. Dawn entirely approved.  
  
It pleased her to see that SITs had learned to manage him a hell of a lot better than Buffy ever had. Different baggage, probably. And a lot less of it.  
  
Not hopping or bouncing, maintaining a dignified expression, Dawn circled the pit and found a cabinet to perch on because she figured to be just audience. The SITs had to make the running on this because it was their idea. She’d just been the resource person.  
  
The assembled SITs, in their colorful variety of long sleep shirts, baby dolls, and pj’s, and lots and lots of long bare legs, suggested a parliament of Playboy bunnies in one of Xander’s more X-rated dreams, except that none wore makeup and had tense, cranky wee hours expressions that presumably didn’t figure in that sort of dream.  
  
The smallest sofa had been left vacant for the Honored Leaders. Beginning to look nervous, Buffy had known enough to sit in the appointed place. Pulling on one of his black T-shirts in transit, looking wary and mean, Spike naturally sat on the floor in front of the loveseat, even though there was plenty of space for him next to Buffy and it would have been so much cuter that way. But would he do that? Oh, no, Mr. Bill, he had to be freakin’ independent and mistrust anything that was so obviously a set up.  
  
Well, he’d find out.  
  
Settling on the carpeted rim of the pit opposite the loveseat, Amanda folded her hands on her knees and opened the proceedings.  
  
“Slayer, you’ve taken us in and taken responsibility for us, and we appreciate that. But you don’t own us. And some things, we have to decide for ourselves now.” Following that startling opening, which left Buffy looking rather alarmed, Amanda said to Spike, “You call us children. I hope you know we’re not. We’re the best fighters you could make of us in the time we’ve had, and some of us are gonna die, and we all know that. So let’s cut the ‘children’ crap, all right?”  
  
_Crap_ , from Amanda, constituted serious swearing.  
  
Not unlike a sullen dog crouched at Buffy’s feet, Spike didn’t comment, waiting to hear the noun.  
  
So Amanda went on in the same blunt fashion, which was how you had to talk to Spike for him to pay any attention, “When you said goodbye to us last night, where did you think you were going?”  
  
“’Manda, I don’t see that’s any of your fucking business.” When Buffy kicked his back, Spike looked around at her. “Well, ’s’not.”  
  
Buffy told him, “I’d like to hear the answer to that, too.”  
  
Thus suitably ganged up on, Spike took a minute to view first Buffy, then Amanda, with about equal suspicion, then said, “Figured to stay for the patrol, if that’s what you mean. Wasn’t gonna duck out on that.”  
  
“Actually,” said Amanda, “we’d already figured that. No, that’s not what I’m asking you. Things have been done a certain way here for a while now. Two troops. Casa Summers and Casa Spike. And nobody objected because it mostly seemed to be working OK that way, except that the Casa Summers troop mostly got handed the boring, sucky patrols and we got the good exciting ones.”  
  
“Hey, wait a minute,” Buffy started to protest.  
  
“Excuse me, Slayer, but our business is with Spike. If you want to say something when I’m done, you can have a turn then.”  
  
“What is this all about?” Buffy demanded.  
  
Not backing off an inch, which was exactly the way you had to do it, Amanda replied, “We’ve been discussing this for a while. All of us. We have some ideas about how things could be better. And we’re entitled because it’s our lives here. Some choices, nobody else gets to make for us. Now back to the point. Where did you figure to go, Spike? After the patrol.”  
  
“All right,” Spike decided. “To the cousins. For awhile, anyway.”  
  
“What?” Buffy exploded, though this time without kicking him.  
  
“Would have still turned out for the patrols, an’ all. Just need to get back where I know how to do without having to think it all out every bloody minute. An’ then wrong anyway, for all that. Can’t do that no more. I told you.”  
  
Addressing the back of his head, Buffy demanded, “You were gonna _leave?_ ”  
  
“Yeah. Be my own dog for awhile. Didn’t think you’d have much objection.”  
  
Dawn heard what he didn’t say: _After tonight_.  
  
Buffy’s hand flew significantly to her neck at the realization that the snacking hadn’t been accidental, spontaneous, or reflexive.  
  
Dawn thought her original idea of tying them both down and _making_ them talk still had been the best. According to Spike’s admittedly incoherent blurt, he’d expressed a wish to “set his mark” on Buffy, and Buffy had made no objection. What had Buffy thought he meant? What _else_ could it mean if your vampire boyfriend said he wanted to set his mark on you? He was gonna give you his team jacket instead of a really severe hickey?  
  
So here’s Spike, thinking that he’s asked and been given consent, and here’s Buffy freaking and sending Spike off the deep end. Totally ridiculous.  
  
Sometimes Dawn wondered if they ever actually communicated at all.  
  
Amanda and Kim had agreed: adults were insane.  
  
“Proceeding,” Amanda said rather loudly before a quarrel of really major and embarrassingly intimate proportions could break out, “Spike, what’s the worst thing about pigs’ blood?”  
  
He frowned at her as though she’d sprouted a second head. “What?”  
  
“What’s the worst thing about pigs’ blood? The taste? Something about pigs? What?”  
  
“Well, it’s _dead_ , innit?” Spike responded with obvious sincere revulsion.  
  
“Hadn’t thought about it that way--that what we eat is dead,” Amanda reflected. “But that’s true. Even vegetables. They’re dead. Anything cooked is dead. Sprouts? Never mind.” She shook the thought off. “So once the blood’s been processed, sitting in a plastic jug in the refrigerator, it’s no good anymore.”  
  
“Well, it hasn’t actually _coagulated_ ,” Spike commented with about the expression somebody else might show contemplating day-old road kill. “Blood can be deader than that. But not much. Imagine, you lot, eatin’ dead rats raw. Every day. Keep you alive, that would. But it’d hardly seem worth it. You can cover the taste, mostly. But can’t do nothing about the fact it’s dead. Really putrid stuff.”  
  
“OK, the food around here is really terrible. What are the other problems? What else would you want different, to be willing to stay?”  
  
“No point goin’ on about it.” Spike sounded less wary and defensive, more fed-up and exhausted. “Nothing’s gonna change.”  
  
“You changed for us. We’re willing to change, for you to stay. But we don’t know what’s bad if you don’t tell us. Who knew how much you hated pigs’ blood until now? I hate lima beans, but it’s not a big thing, I can eat something else. For you, blood is it. That’s important. Everybody knows you don’t like pigs’ blood. But nobody knew it was borderline nauseating and spoiled! How would we know, Spike? Did you ever say so?”  
  
“No,” Spike said, after a minute, soberly, “I never did. Didn’t see any point.”  
  
Over on the far side, JoAnne burst out, “Give us some credit here, Spike. You think you can tell us fifty dozen times that to those vamps we’ll be patrolling with, we’re just lunch, and we don’t know that’s you too? You think that we don’t know you’re not just some guy, you’re a vampire? That we don’t know that you’re so goddam _homesick_ for it, or however you’d call it, that it’s barely worth you putting on the mask anymore pretending otherwise?”  
  
In a deadly voice, Spike said, “Which of you children has complaint against me for how you been treated?”  
  
Waving down voices of the other SITs protesting, Amanda shot back, “Nobody, Spike! Nobody. All right? You’re not hearing us. Nobody at all is criticizing you here. Just the opposite. We need you and don’t want you forced out by, by ignorant neglect. OK, leave the other issues aside for the moment. Just stay with the one thing. And we’re not children. Get rid of that habit. The past week or so, we’ve been talking about cooperation between us and vamps against a common enemy. That’s a basis for cooperation--enough to try. Right? Slayer?”  
  
“Yeah,” Buffy said. “It at least seems worth a try.”  
  
“Spike?”  
  
“Yeah. So?”  
  
“That’s what we already have, Spike. You and us. And it’s worked. Last night you told us you’d taught us the best you knew, and we all really believe that. We’re good, and we know it, and it’s because you’ve been teaching us. Training us. We’re good because you’re good. And we want to keep going with it. All of us. No more crap about your troop and the Slayer’s troop. Buffy, half the day you’re at work, and then there’s patrol most evenings. When is there time for you to put in a six-hour training session with your troop, like we have every day? There’s not enough of you to go around. That’s not a criticism, that’s a fact. Spike has a job too, but it doesn’t start until midnight and it’s only four days a week. The rest of the time, he’s teaching us. General sessions and individual training, whatever’s needed. Full time. It’s come to the point that half the people in Slayer troop are sneaking over here every morning to get in on the weapons drill. Because how else are they gonna learn? Spike, you can divide us up any way you want, but it’s all the SITs. Who in the Slayer’s troop wants to resign and be just the SITs, training with Spike? Show of hands.”  
  
Nine, and then eleven, and then thirteen hands went up--some defiantly, some apologetically, some sneaking barely shoulder high but still up. Unanimous.  
  
“I _try_ to make time,” Buffy commented plaintively. She looked as though she couldn’t decide between being indignant, defensive, or relieved.  
  
Amanda soothed, “Everybody knows you do. But it’s not practical, and it’s not working. It’s time somebody said so and did something about it. With this new arrangement, Spike, the food gets better. Effective immediately. Us.” Amanda did a slow wave indicating all the SITs gathered around. “Since Dawn is the only one who’s ever bothered to find out what a vampire needs per day on average, Dawn helped us run the numbers. And it’s doable. There’s twenty-seven of us. All healthy. About a pint in rotation, every couple of weeks, isn’t gonna do the least harm to anybody. You take care of us and we’ll take care of you.”  
  
It was the moment Dawn had been waiting for: when they understood the offer. While Buffy gaped like a fish, Spike handled the revelation by going after his cigarettes, away off by the bed, lighting one, and leisurely returning with an ashtray, dropping back into his former place. Keeping his face and his reaction to himself. Typical. Poker habit, probably.  
  
The first thing Buffy found to say was, “You can’t.”  
  
“We can,” Amanda contradicted. “And we will. Everybody has agreed.”  
  
“Spike--?” Buffy began in an ominous tone.  
  
Not looking around, Spike responded, “Slayer.”  
  
“Did you put them up to this?”  
  
“First I heard about it. But you don’t have to take my word on it: ask ‘em.”  
  
Kennedy stood up. “It was my idea.” As usual, she was frowning, but still composed. “We need what he has. He needs what we have. It seems like a fair exchange. I thought about it and we started talking it over a few days after that business at the airport.”  
  
It was in rescuing Kennedy from her own arrogant stupidity, almost six weeks ago, that Spike had effectively burned both his hands off.  
  
Buffy was back to making fish faces, and Spike was regarding Kennedy thoughtfully, because everybody knew Kennedy didn’t even _like_ Spike. So this being her idea immediately deflated a good many counter-arguments.  
  
More quietly, seriously, Buffy said to Amanda again, “You can’t.”  
  
“Yes. We can. This isn’t up to you, Slayer.”  
  
Spike tapped his cigarette on the ashtray. “Yes it is. ‘Cause nothing don’t happen here without her say-so.” Then he gave Amanda a calm, level look that said this was not negotiable.  
  
Nobody had foreseen this problem. Kennedy sat down, and Amanda and Dawn traded a semi-panicked look.  
  
Deciding it was Amanda who needed backup this time, Dawn slid off the cabinet and went to stand behind to her: the designated sister. “Why not, Buffy?”  
  
“Well, because biting people and drinking their blood is wrong!”  
  
“Sez who?” Dawn responded, and folded her arms.  
  
“Everybody knows it’s wrong!”  
  
“Everybody minus how many? Show of hands.”  
  
All twenty-seven hands went up. Actually twenty-nine, because Dawn put her hand up and Kim stuck up both of hers. Spike conspicuously did not vote, but Dawn considered that a discreet abstention.  
  
Dawn said, “Buffy, vampires bite people and are sustained by live blood. Notice I said _live_. That’s part of the definition of what a vampire _is_ , Buffy. That’s what they do. What they _are_. What they _need_. If you have an objection to this fundamental _need_ of vampire metabolism, you’re in a minority here, you might notice.” Dawn had no scruples against heavy-handed hinting, and was pleased to see Buffy’s hand again go to the side of her neck where a new white quick-healed mark was apparent if you looked really hard. That gave her a matching set, with the bite-mark from Angel on the opposite side.  
  
Amanda said earnestly, “Please, Buffy. We need him to stay. We need to change things so he can. Nobody’s being unreasonable about this. It’s a workable arrangement.”  
  
And Dawn asked Spike, “Does this make sense to you?”  
  
He considered, quite soberly. “Could. Could do. Maybe.”  
  
Buffy muttered something, and Amanda said, “What?”  
  
“One for the Boogey Man Credo, I said. Giles will go stratospheric. We’ll need a telescope…. All right. One week trial. And if anybody objects, this stops.”  
  
“No,” said Dawn, “if anybody objects, they drop out of the rotation. As long as there are enough in the rotation to make it work, the arrangement stands.”  
  
“And who says if there are enough?” Buffy challenged.  
  
“I do,” said Spike. “Because I’m the only one who knows. If you children are willing to abide by it, so am I. An’ I’m not gonna quit calling you children, so get used to it. By my standards, you’re all of you children. Slayer?”  
  
At last he looked around, and Buffy’s hand came down from her neck to rest on his shoulder. They were looking at each other, faces maybe a foot apart. “All right. One week trial, agreed. Because I…really don’t want him to leave either. Spike, are you _sure_ you didn’t set this up?”  
  
Spike only smiled.  
  
**********  
  
In hastily convened mass-SIT session in the front room of Casa Spike about an hour before sunrise, it was initially felt that Kennedy should be first to try the new arrangement, since it’d been her idea. But to really nobody’s surprise, Kennedy wasn’t all that eager. For her, it was clearly a matter of principle taking priority over strong personal preference. Not only did she not want to give the required report, but there was the whole guy thing, and the Spike himself thing, and apparently several other things that she didn’t want to discuss. She’d take her turn when it came but didn’t want to be first.  
  
Dawn would have volunteered, but she wasn’t a SIT and it just wouldn’t have looked good, after Buffy, which everybody now knew about but had agreed not to discuss in public. About like the sex, which occasionally was noisy beyond anybody’s ability to ignore. Particularly Buffy. But sometimes Spike. Just one of the less appealing perks of living at Casa Spike. The SITs dealt.  
  
Amanda raised her eyebrows and made a wincing, woeful face like a Kabuki mask. “So I guess I’m it.”  
  
Dawn hurried to reassure her. “It’s a token: I’m certain he’s not really hungry right now. And besides, Buffy will be there, watching for anything even vaguely approaching hanky-panky. Like the proverbial hawk, you can believe it. And I’m really sure Spike doesn’t want to scare you!”  
  
“Yeah. I guess. Like the striking distance drill, only for real. OK, no fainting. I’ll just be mortified to death if I faint. No fainting.”  
  
Chubby, solid Kim in yellow baby dolls shoved past and trudged down the hall. About half the SITs came out or leaned out to watch. At the top of the stairs, Kim turned to remark, “If you faint, everybody will freak, ‘Manda. I’ll do it. I haven’t been running around sans bra for the past month like _some_ people I might name. Not built for it. I suggest a permanent moratorium on that, if anybody cares. It’s vile.” Then she stomped down the stairs, making as much noise as possible.  
  
She didn’t stomp, coming back a few minutes later. While everybody stared, Kim grinned, taking obvious pleasure in making them wait. Then she tilted her head, pointed, and turned a full rotation, to make sure everybody had a chance to see the two fang marks over the big artery right behind the hinge of her jaw.  
  
They all gathered around.  
  
Peering, Suzanne remarked, “Just like in the movies. Awesome.”  
  
“No blood or anything,” Amanda noted, looking hugely relieved, as was natural because seeing or smelling blood generally made her throw up. She was fine against vamps but against Bringers, not so much.  
  
“He’s neat,” Kim agreed.  
  
“Did it hurt?” Rona asked anxiously.  
  
“Nah. On a scale of ten, not even a one. You can hardly feel it. Kind of tingles, as much as anything. And kind of numb, too. If somebody’s that curious, they can ask him why it doesn’t hurt worse because I’m not gonna. Dawn, you want to know that bad?”  
  
“I’ll think about it,” Dawn commented, and added smugly, “I can ask him anything.”  
  
“Yeah, well, there’s things I don’t particularly want to know that much about. And afterward, he _licks_ you.”  
  
“Oh, ick,” said somebody in the back.  
  
“No ick,” contradicted Kim. “Not the least ick. Seals it up, he said. All tidy, he said. He was real nice about it, looked me in the eyes and everything. Serious. Trying real hard not to be scary, just like you said, Dawn.” Kim hitched a shoulder. “‘Course, I knew that anyway. He knows how to be nice. After all, this is a kind of a business arrangement. So not _too_ nice, if you get what I mean. Slayer was looking absolute daggers. But he was cool about it.”  
  
“Punnage! Punnage!” Gail chimed in, while several people groaned.  
  
“My turn next,” said Sue avidly. “When’s next?”  
  
“I’ll make up a roster,” said Dawn.  
  
“No, I will,” said Amanda. “This is SIT business.” To soften what might otherwise have seemed a snub, Amanda hugged her. “You were terrific: you stood right up to her!”  
  
Dawn shrugged with elegant casualness. “Sisters are useful for that sometimes.”  
  
**********  
  
Buffy had stayed on the loveseat while Spike took his little careful chaste nip at Kim and sent her on her way. No squeals of delight. No cinematic swoons. About the heat level of pecking your visiting ancient maiden aunt on the cheek. Buffy still didn’t like it, not one bit, and would never be completely convinced he hadn’t somehow connived with the SITs to pull off this minor mutiny.  
  
And Giles’ reaction didn’t even bear thinking about. He’d go into cardiac arrest. And after that, he’d start talking and the tirade he’d given Willow over the irresponsible use of magic would recede into memory as a happy chat. Maybe he wouldn’t find out.  
  
Sure, right.  
  
Sure, no swoons. But no exclamations of horror and revulsion, either. And why had squeals of delight been the first dire possibility that had leaped into Buffy’s mind? Just too many dumb Lugosi and Christopher Lee movies? Media mind-wipe?  
  
That reflection started her rethinking matters very soberly.  
  
Spike had conspicuously found things to fiddle with, kick around, and do in the middle of the room as a pretext for not returning. From time to time he’d absently rub the side of his neck: probably where Dawn had tasered him. More than once, Buffy caught them both performing the same gesture at the same time, which was really absurd.  
  
“If this biting business is so freaking natural, why’d you go all hysterical afterward?” Buffy demanded.  
  
He looked around, answering simply, “’Cause I’d hurt you.”  
  
“What’d you expect--I was gonna _enjoy_ it?”  
  
“Well, yeah.”  
  
“Seriously?”  
  
“Yeah, seriously. Been known to happen.”  
  
“Exactly what is your basis of comparison?”  
  
He shook his head, barely a smile. “No, you don’t get me to go there. Expected you to disapprove. Afterward. Never thought you’d take it as any harm. I--” He threw away any attempt at further explanation with a flip of his hand, circling off again.  
  
He did that when he gave up, Buffy thought then. When he despaired of her understanding and gave up trying.  
  
“C’mere,” Buffy said, very seriously, and got a wary, spooked look as reply. Buffy was thinking of Dawn’s saying that he’d been hard to understand because he’d kept forgetting to breathe. She’d never seen him as totally freaked as that. Spike without words was unthinkable. To him, it hadn’t been a scheme or a careless mistake. It’d come very near to being a catastrophe.  
  
It was like algebra, or trig, or some other very hard thing for Buffy to not only realize everybody didn’t see the same world the same way but to imagine actually _being_ somebody else and seeing that different way. Specifically, to be Spike. See things as he did. Even trying made her feel cross-eyed and dizzy. But sometimes, she could imagine. Sometimes she could connect, even after he’d given up.  
  
“Come on. I want to ask you something. Nothing bad. No hitting.”  
  
And she thought then what a good and sustaining thing it was that whenever she truly asked, he would hardly ever refuse her. He came and settled on the floor, the way he’d been before: backing her up against the SITs. Not only leaving the choice to her but insisting nobody had the choice except her.  
  
Head bent, Spike told her, “I expect I told you some time or another, but I never been with anybody but Dru--yeah, and Harmony, her too--like I am with you. Just vamps. So sometimes I make mistakes, an’ I don’t mean to. Never thought there’d be any harm in it. Just that you wouldn’t think it was right. Wouldn’t approve afterward. ‘S’why I wouldn’t show you, first time you asked. Thought you’d…think the worse of me, or yourself, or something, on that account. Didn’t mean no harm though.”  
  
“Spike, without even trying I can recall ten, a dozen times we did something together really off the wall…sometimes actually involving walls…and afterward I’d turn around and go all ‘Get thee behind me’ and blame it all on you. I would have denied I was even there, if I could, much less denied I’d enjoyed it. About the only time I didn’t was that once I was invisible…. So there’s precedent. For you expecting me to act that way. But we’re trying a new thing here. Don’t assume I’m quite as predictable as you think I am.”  
  
He gave one of those shaky laughs that twisted Buffy up inside. “No fear, love. You never stop surprising me. Likely never will, neither.”  
  
All the surprises hadn’t been good. It wasn’t what he’d said or maybe even meant. But it was true.  
  
“And how’s the soul at the moment?”  
  
“Still hurts. Still tryin’ to poison me for being such a wretched git as to hurt you.” A self-mocking, bitter chuckle. “Just the usual, I s’pose.”  
  
Buffy leaned forward and hugged him, both as reassurance and to keep him there, and laid her cheek against his hair. “Tell me honestly: did you like it? Is that something that feels good to you?”  
  
“You’re joking.”  
  
“No. Not even a little.”  
  
He pulled out of her embrace, to swing around and look at her fully. “You-- I can’t believe-- Well, I guess you don’t. It’s very fine, love. Dunno how to say it except that. Only once before did I ever feed from a Slayer. An’ no, I wasn’t fucking her at the time, neither. First one I killed. It was a brilliant fight, and I won, and I drank her. Afterward I lived off the memory of that…well, up till tonight, actually. Never knew anything to compare. An’ now there’ll never be anything, ever, to compare to what this was, this one time, an’ no death in it now between us--only joy. For me anyway. Couldn’t wish for better.” Spike laid his arms across her lap and bent his head on them. Couldn’t speak of such an enormous joy without touching her.  
  
“Well, I’ll tell you something if you promise not to tell Giles.”  
  
“What, love.”  
  
“Until I started thinking how horrified I should be, and all the reasons my forty thousand closest friends would all be horrified and disgusted, and Giles would be horrified and have me committed….before all that got in the way…it felt very fine to me. Too. And I’m dying of shame here, admitting that. Not exactly shame--embarrassment, awkwardness, confusion…. Sometimes…I lie to myself about what I feel. But I don’t know that’s what I’m doing until later. Sometimes much later…. It’s been hard for me to accept there are things we do, that I like, and we like, that I would never ever dare admit to anybody. Except you. Because in that, you’re the only one that matters. Discovering oral sex, for instance--when _I_ actually had to do anything--was a thing I thought I’d never accept. Too horrible and repulsive, nobody could possibly expect me to do _that!_ Which attitude has, you may have noticed, slightly moderated over time….  
  
“So I’m trying really hard here not to lie to myself and certainly not to you, because…because it’s important, that’s all. There’s no rules for what we are, together. Or for what we do. Never a Slayer and a vampire together, the way we are, or else it’s been very thoroughly hushed up…. We have to make it up as we go. And sometimes, figure it out…. So it was. Very fine. Scary and unexpected and waaay overwhelming, but fine. Underwhelming not a virtue here. So you practice on your SITs and nobody better get dead or too happy, and we’ll put this aside for a while until I can…make my peace with it. But sometime again. Sometime, that will be OK. And more than OK, it’s huge and strange and scary. But that’s part of it, always--the scary stuff. The stuff you have to trust me for, or the stuff I have to trust you for, that would be real bad without the trust. World-famous trapeze act with no safety net…. I know I’m gonna dream about it. And it won’t be scary in a dream because then it’s all allowed.”  
  
After awhile he said, “There’s been times when loving you has been a curse even my worst enemy wouldn’t have wished on me. And then there are the times when it’s as close as I can imagine to a blessing. An’ one time like this, it makes up for all the rest.”  
  
Buffy wished she could say back to him what loving him was like. She still didn’t have those words to say. But she thought she was closer than she’d been.  
  
Maybe not now, not yet, she thought. But sometime.


	12. Section 3: Engagements — Patrol

Under other circumstances, Spike would have started drinking and not quit until he passed out. Just too much to deal with. Some of the things brilliant and splendid, and some so awful that his mind shied away even while their effects kept hitting him like the end of a bad fight when you couldn’t see the blows coming anymore and only knew when the next one knocked you crooked and staggering.  
  
He watched Buffy dealing out weapons from the chest. The children were all about, coming and going, so he made himself wait until only the last few were left. That was long enough. He released himself to her, clove fast, kissed her hard and hungry, for all they’d spent the whole morning shagging like minks till he couldn’t tell where he left off and she began and didn’t want to, neither.  
  
“Could do you right here,” he told her when he quit to let her breathe. And his demon wanted to. Hell with the children. Hell with the patrol. He could smell the morning all over her and wanted her again and still.  
  
She took what breath she needed very quick and came back at him, her mouth a furnace of heat. All of her, scalding right through the clothes.  
  
But there wasn’t time, and they both knew it, so they held back from utterly scandalizing the children, who’d cleared out fast anyhow. Not neither of them inclined to stop, breathing hard, except that time was too short to have another proper go that wouldn’t change or ease anything anyway.  
  
“Tell me again,” he asked her, very soft.  
  
“ _Didn’t_ hurt me. Just scared me. No: _it_ scared me, you didn’t. Just too much, too strong. And too strange for me to deal, right away.” Buffy thumped him on the chest, demanding in a fierce whisper, “Stupid soul, leave him alone!”  
  
But the soul still paid no heed, kept telling him he was wrong, and had hurt her, even though he knew, and she said, he’d done no such thing. All still confused and contrary and all running on the supercharged Slayer blood, so strong that he was pushed past his limits and felt as if he might shake himself to pieces.  
  
He tried to make the same distinction as she had: _it_ didn’t make any sense. But _she_ did. All sorts of good sense and simple, powerful connections. He tried to hold to that and shove the other away.  
  
But there was too much of the other to do that for long. The despairing panic, the wish to just be gone never mind how, that hadn’t been changed, only set aside, suppressed. Every now and again, it erupted nearly as strong as before and blindsided him. And like everything else it was powered, it ran roaring, on the Slayer blood.  
  
Like swallowing down the living heart of heat. Enormous heat coiled into his core and radiating, pulsing, hardly cooled in him though nearly a day had passed. And coming so hard all twined into it, so sometimes he seemed still suspended in that moment, the finest he ever expected to know. Exploding and taking in simultaneously. Emptying completely and being ecstatically filled. Nothing else could be that fine. Nothing at all.  
  
And then the damn soul would kick in with its wretched conviction of _wrong, hurting her, destroying her,_ and all sense would drop out of everything again and he’d just want to curl up and die. If the wonder of feeding on and climaxing with a Slayer wasn’t right, then nothing was and everything dust and ashes and no hope at all.  
  
Like she’d said: _Way out on the far edge of nothing, where it’s all dark except for the fires._ The world as hell.  
  
And him too caught up in it to sort any of it or do anything except try to keep moving and not be overwhelmed.  
  
Drinking himself insensible was a really appealing alternative except that anything short of that, he’d only have lost what sense and control he still had. Everything roiling in him so heavy and hot and fast, and then take the brakes off and wreck the steering.  
  
Didn’t seem wise.  
  
Seemed like utter fucking insanity, in fact. But then, so did all of it.  
  
Second choice: go kill something.  
  
Fortunately, that could be arranged.  
  
Slayer was taking the witch, the children, and all the weapons in the van. As they pulled out, Spike turned to get the motorbike, searching his pockets for the key. Not finding it. Recalling then emptying his pockets so as not to waste the money--leave it for them, what he had. Must have dropped it then. Just what he didn’t need, one more damn thing getting away from him. He wheeled and started back toward the house, and there was Dawn, smugly holding up something in two prim fingers.  
  
“Forget something?” she asked, snippy and provoking.  
  
“Not in the mood, Bit.” But when he reached for the key, she closed her hand around it.  
  
“Condition,” she said. “I go with.”  
  
Almost, he took the key anyway. But not quite. He fisted his hand at his side to keep it there, make it mind. “’S’not what the Slayer said.”  
  
“It’s what I say. Deal.”  
  
“Get your helmet, then. Go on: not takin’ you without.”  
  
While she scampered off to wherever she’d stashed it, Spike went to the bike and paced, trying to wind down. Nearly flashed out at her, and that wasn’t acceptable. When she came running back with the helmet and consented to hand over the key, Spike told her, “Bit, you sing small around me. Altogether out of patience here.”  
  
Mounting up behind him, she responded cheerily, “Got my taser,” and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that but decided best to leave it alone and pulled out.  
  
Reaching Willy’s, the first thing Spike saw was Harris’ truck. And the second thing was the Watcher’s rental red Mustang, the new ugly design that had no style at all. Oh, fine. Wonderful. Spike kept going, slow and weaving through the crowd in the mustering place, and stopped the bike in the weeds out back, where it was dark and empty. Turning the key, he felt Dawn scrambling down and quick grabbed her arm and held her there, trying to think what to tell her.  
  
“Dunno who to tell you to stay with. Red, maybe. Or Harris, yeah, that’s better. C’mon.”  
  
There were vamps and other assorted demons everyplace--wandering around like Fourth of July, waiting for the fireworks. Like a fucking county fair except no Ferris wheel, no cheap prizes. A right glory of inhalables though: get stoned just standing in the vicinity. With Dawn in tow twisting and complaining, which set up ugly echoes of the night he’d lost her, Spike shoved whoever he found in his way, looking for Harris. Naturally they instead ran into Michael, who wanted to talk about the arrangements.  
  
“Not now, Michael. Got to get this child off my hands,” Spike said, starting past, but Bit had set her feet and didn’t budge.  
  
Wearing her hugest smile, Dawn stuck out her free hand. “Michael. Hi. I’ve been wanting to meet you. I’m Dawn.”  
  
Mike’s eyes cut back to Spike for a clue what he was supposed to do. Spike sighed. “Dawn, this is Michael. Michael, Dawn’s mine and I’ll do anybody who so much as touches her. All clear here now?”  
  
“Handshake count as touching?”  
  
“No, go ahead and shake her fucking hand, she won’t quit else. Bit, you’re gonna drive me round the bend, you go on like this.”  
  
Dawn of course paid no attention, shaking Michael’s hand and grinning like a fool, just like Mike wouldn’t drink her down in a second and three more like her if he got the chance. Really bad idea bringing her, should have bloody well walked if she wouldn’t give up the key, should turn right around and take her home now except that everybody else was here and he had things he was supposed to be seeing to. Goddam fucking hell.  
  
Whole thing was a terrible idea and he should’ve never agreed to it.  
  
Spotting Harris, Spike dragged Dawn away while she shouted goodbyes and “Nice to meet you!” like taking leave from bloody afternoon tea. Delivering her over to Harris, as much as he could considering Harris had both hands occupied with food, Spike directed, “Get her home, she’s got no business bein’ here in the first place. Chain her up, I don’t care, just get her out of here. Bit, you quit bein’ a bitch and mind Harris. Not all that fond of you at the moment, so you behave.”  
  
As Spike turned away, Harris was asking Dawn who’d brought her, and Dawn said, and Harris yelled some smart remark, and Spike didn’t want to know about it, not at all.  
  
Before he could find Mike again to get matters squared away he ran into Willy, coming out from behind a plank bar set up across a couple of sawhorses, and all Willy wanted to do was whinge on about Spike not showing up last night. Spike waited through it as the reasons for not pulling Willy’s face off grew less and less compelling and some of that must have shown, because Willy decided they’d settle up about it later and scuttled back behind the bar. Willy had no goddam complaint coming, he was getting a little over two vamps’ work for no more pay, considering the minions, and where the hell had they got to, anyway?  
  
Time to get this fucking fools’ parade sorted and moving.  
  
**********  
  
There were thirteen SITs and about thirty vamps divided into two troops. The Slayer was in charge of one and Spike had the other, with Mike seconding him. The plan was to loosely cordon off the two front gates of the school’s high chain link perimeter fence. There was a construction gate at the rear but Harris had padlocked it last night.  
  
It wasn’t a full blockade: they weren’t yet fitted out for anything like that. The idea was to be waiting for whatever Biters emerged and take them down, judging in the process how well the mixed troops of vamps and SITs seemed to work.  
  
The SITs had been trained to fight in pairs, one engaging, the other going for the kill. To each pair would be added two vamps. They’d do the engaging, a screen for the SITs and their tasers. Once the Biter was down, Spike or the Slayer would do the final honors with a two-handed battle axe.  
  
Nothing fancy, nothing that depended on intricate coordination or split-second timing. Just see ‘em and slay ‘em. Seemed like a simple enough plan that nothing should go too wrong they couldn’t adjust to, get around.  
  
Maybe twenty minutes after the troops moved into place, the first few Turok-han emerged: three of the stalking grey Biters, all headed toward the Slayer’s gate. Leaving Mike to mind things, Spike headed that way too. He called JoAnne, Chloe, and their pair of vamps to him, to draw the first Biter off and leave Buffy and the rest with only two to deal with. Needed space to do a Biter, especially with tasers in the mix. The three were dusted with minor damage to one of the vamps. Spike returned to the other gate.  
  
Maybe ten minutes later, two more Turok-han came out to be dusted. Spike loaned Mike the axe and let him do the honors. Did all right, and nobody hurt this time.  
  
One of the SITs, Vi, found a pie plate in the weeds. She, Kim, and one of the vamps, a little red-headed runt, started playing Frisbee catch with it. Spike took the axe back and leaned on it. Two more vamps joined the Frisbee game. Sides were chosen, a midline was scraped in the dirt, and they started keeping score. The vamp who’d been hurt began grousing because she couldn’t play.  
  
Spike tipped the axe against the fence and started pacing. He didn’t recall a night when fewer than fifteen, sixteen Turok-han were wandering around in Sunnydale. Certainly not a Saturday, the best hunting night of the week. Something off.  
  
He checked the area inside the fence lit by the school’s roof-mounted floodlights, found it clear, and went over to Buffy. “Give it some more time, if you want, but I say declare a victory and pack it in. If they ain’t come by now, they’re not coming.”  
  
“Somewhat less than exciting,” Buffy agreed. “On the up side, everybody seems to be playing nice….”  
  
Two of the vamps got into each other’s faces over who’d touched the pie plate first. Mike started over to settle them down. And Buffy’s head whipped around as if she’d heard something Spike hadn’t, which wasn’t likely.  
  
Willow in her head. Well, at least Red seemed to have learned not to do him like that. He wondered that Buffy still put up with it.  
  
From Buffy’s changing expression, the news wasn’t good, no surprise. She said, “On the radio. At the hospital. What sounds like about ten Turok-han, except they’re claiming they’re something or other escaped from the zoo. We don’t even _have_ a zoo, Spike.”  
  
Spike thought that the evening was looking up again.  
  
**********  
  
The hot-wired 6 x 6 jerked to a rough halt outside the Emergency dock Spike had come to know quite well, and all the vamps piled out. Slayer and the SITs, female and human, could waltz in through the front a lot more acceptably than a mixed bunch of vamps in game-face. This way was best.  
  
A few people down, crudely broken and dead, around the entrance and back by the admissions desk. There was a security camera: Spike swiped and broke it with the long-handled axe, idly wondering what’d be made of the tapes. More escaped zoo animals, most likely. Martians from Andromeda. No matter.  
  
Once inside, it was no problem knowing which way to head: follow the smell of blood wafting so strong down the elevator shaft. Like music heard from far off. And deafening the nearer you came.  
  
For the first second, when they all spilled from the elevators on the upper floor, it was more than Spike could take in. No sign of Turok-han: first thing he’d looked for. Instead, the general ward or whatever they called it, where Dawn had ended up that time her arm got broke in a car wreck with Red, some sixty beds all lined up, two sides, and most of them filled, was the worst mess Spike had ever seen, and that was including several battlefields. Except only a few dead. A couple of burly orderlies, some medical people--nurses or doctors with stethoscope necklaces and clipped IDs--and one man whose uniform suggested internal security, all dispatched and cleanly drained.  
  
The rest, all the patients, had been opened and left to bleed.  
  
A few maybe that could have been fixed, on their feet or flopping around with some energy. But that wasn’t the point or the issue anymore. Not after the vamps saw the buffet that the overwhelming sweet strong bloodsmell had drawn them to and began doing what vamps inevitably would do when presented with such a richness all laid out for them.  
  
Walking forward into the ward, Spike set two hands wide on the axe and pushed it against a pillar, cracking the haft as near the blade as he could manage. That had to be first.  
  
Then he said, “On the floor or you’re gone.” No need to shout. The ward was silent and they were all vampires.  
  
Not a one paid any heed. Not even Michael, still standing by the elevators and scowling, trying to make out what this was and what it meant.  
  
Methodical and fast, Spike started doing them all. He’d dusted maybe five before those not still obliviously feeding reacted, realized, and came at him. Wild with the blood smell and the taste, as he might have been if he hadn’t fed so splendidly the night before. No different except he could keep himself from it and they could not. No different except they’d crossed his word and he knew, as at least the younger ones didn’t, what had to follow from that.  
  
From behind the nurse’s station, he had the reach on those coming at him long enough to dust two more before he had to move and dodge. In the open he cut the legs out from under as many as he could hit, sweeping hard to one side and then the other and then finishing those he’d taken down, quick terse punches of the butt-end of the stick crushing the rib cage into the heart and the dust following. There were fewer now because at least some of those who knew how things were had backed off and dropped flat near the set of big doors where the Slayer and the children were just bursting through.  
  
Naturally it had taken them longer. The bait hadn’t been left for them, or the clear marked path. This set-up wasn’t for them though maybe the aftermath had been if they’d tried to interfere. As of course they would have. Among the reasons Spike had to settle it all first: before they could get involved; before the vamps could turn on them.  
  
He had no time or attention to spare, just had to hope the Slayer had the sense to keep the children out of it, they could do no good now. If one of the feeding vamps came at them, they were well set to take it down and he’d dust it afterward if there was still need.  
  
Michael was finally moving, approaching where Spike was holding off about eighteen vamps in the clear space between the ranked beds and still dusting them at a great rate, two or three a minute, the axe haft as easy as a pool cue in his hands. Whether Mike meant to help or attack made no matter, it was too late for that, and Spike put him down with the thick end of the haft between the eyes. The Slayer’s intent was more certain, but Spike shouted to her, “No! Tend to the children,” and for bloody once she did as she’d been told and retreated again.  
  
Four of the vamps went at the SITs--maybe for hostages, maybe as a try for their weapons, there being nothing to hand but plastic, metal. Or maybe they’d been only hoping to get out the door. Didn’t matter. The children did ‘em, neat and tidy, their dust bursting over the ones on the floor. And after a little longer the vamps on the floor, and Michael starting to stir, were the only ones left.  
  
Spike went and stood over the nearest one lying there. The vamp, the little red-headed one, exclaimed, “I submit!”  
  
Spike tapped his shoulder with the haft, and he rolled over. Blood on his mouth. Spike dusted him with a quick punch of the stick. Went to the next one, and the same.  
  
The last two were clean-faced, either had the sense to lick it off or hadn’t had the chance to begin feeding but no matter, good enough.  
  
To each of them, Spike said, “I accept your submission. You have your life from my hand. Get up.”  
  
Then he turned back to Michael, who was on his feet by then.  
  
Mike said, “Would have helped. Looked like fun.” Not easy for him to talk, most likely, because Spike had hit him clean: busted the nose, likely driven some of the bone into the brain, but that couldn’t keep a vamp down for long. Barely give him a headache, if he’d lasted long enough for one to develop. Blood running down his face, eyes starting to swell shut. Not a pretty sight.  
  
“Should have been,” Spike agreed. “Wasn’t, somehow. Maybe it’s getting played takes some of the fun out of it. Have to do you now, Michael.”  
  
“Or?”  
  
Spike shook his head. “’S’not the way it works.”  
  
Amazing he could scowl with his face in such condition, but Mike managed it, pointing to the two vamps, now minions, that Spike had spared.  
  
Spike shook his head again. The lad really didn’t know anything. “They were under your word. You’re accountable, that they didn’t mind. An’ then that they came at me. That’s on you, Michael. They maybe get the option to submit. You’d have to earn it.”  
  
At least Mike didn’t ask how he could do that. The lad was ignorant, not stupid, or no more than most. He stood a minute, deciding, then came at Spike quick, an arm raised to fend off the stick, going for the stick.  
  
Spike reversed it, spinning back the part Mike was reaching for and beating him down with the other, backing, circling, sliding his two hands lower until he was wielding nearly the full length. Struck a wrist, busted that, but couldn’t get the right angle on the other and swatted Mike in the ribs a few times, swinging the stick like a bat. Got the angle then and struck the other wrist, a solid, disabling blow. Sprang away when Mike lunged but the lad had done well, inside the stick’s swing and trying to yank Spike’s feet out but couldn’t do that, not with both wrists busted and Spike’s feet and balance set as they should be.  
  
The stick couldn’t swing at Mike so close, but Spike held it vertical by the center and brought it down with the full strength of his back and arms. Cracked Mike’s shoulder and then the collarbone when Mike flopped over onto his back.  
  
Spike stood over him, the stick poised high and straight. “You done now, Michael?”  
  
Mike strained for a moment, couldn’t get any leverage, any way to push off, and fell back flat again. “Guess so.” His eyes, swollen all but shut and clouded with blood anyway, tried to focus on the end of the stick.  
  
“Now you got the option. I suggest you take it.”  
  
Either the boyo wasn’t thinking any too clear anymore or it took him a minute or two to make up his mind to it. Then he said flatly, “I submit,” and sagged even flatter, which Spike wouldn’t have thought possible.  
  
“I accept your submission, Michael. You have your life from my hand. Now get up and help the children figure if there’s any here like to live if they’re seen to.”  
  
Mike tried again, then reported dully, “Can’t.”  
  
Spike turned. “’Manda, help Michael here get on his feet so he can do what I told him.”  
  
Spike reflected that sometime he’d explain it to Mike--pack structure, and subordination, and what fealty and submission entailed and what was owed in return. Why some subordinate vamp might be allowed to submit after disobedience or failure but not one in a position of trust. Not till he’d been beaten down and on the point of death or the submission would never hold, never mean what it should. Could never trust the lad again otherwise. So next time, Mike would know such things and know how to do.  
  
Such teaching was one of the things that was fit between master and minion.  
  
And the first terrible thing was that it all made perfect, unquestioned sense.  
  
And the second terrible thing was that the soul made no protest. Smug and aloof and indifferent to any pain that wasn’t human.  
  
Spike flung the axe haft away.


	13. Section 4: Strategy — Retreats and Approaches

Leaning back against the slight recess of the loading bay, Spike put down a fair amount of bourbon, then passed the bottle back to Mike, letting it touch the back of Mike’s hand so he’d know it was there, waiting until it was held steady before letting go. The lad had one good hand, or good enough.  
  
Mike’s face being a thorough train wreck, Spike had ripped off a long strip of sheet, there in the hospital, and made a blindfold/bandage, which rendered the lad a lot less conspicuous or at least conspicuous in a less alarming way. Spike and the three minions had left through Emergency Receiving without attracting any notice. As in, so out. And back--to Anya’s party.  
  
Dark, quiet, and private, the familiar loading bay of Willy’s seemed as good a place as any. Blindfolded broken-ribbed Michael with his compound skull fracture and broken wrists would know where he was, what was roundabout, how things should sound and smell. He’d know Spike was there, wouldn’t let anything come at him while he was at such a disadvantage. Nothing much a minion had to worry about. That was Spike’s concern now.  
  
For any injured vamp, treatment pretty much consisted of keeping still, time, as much blood as possible, alcohol as available, and not getting dead before you could move.  
  
Being a modern lad, Michael preferred inhalables--odd because otherwise Mike didn’t smoke. In the process of coming up with some of that for him, Spike had been discovered by Anya: cruising the shallow edges of the party to roust anybody not enjoying themselves as required. Likely that was a bit of a chore, given that half the invited guests had been dusted. Anya fluttered some and tried to fuss over Mike, who showed the worst damage. Then she’d provided the bourbon, which was entirely handsome of her. First time Spike had ever known her to lay out actual coin on his account, unless it was some part of the party deal she’d made with Willy, whatever that was. Still nice of her, regardless.  
  
If Turok-han had reduced thirty to just four, it would have constituted an appalling defeat. What being forced to do that reduction himself constituted, Spike didn’t like to think. Except for Michael, whatever Spike saw was a long distance away and that was where he wanted it. And Michael’s company was peaceable, no trouble, most everything simple and understood. Without layers.  
  
Slayer had come into view awhile ago. Spike had stayed quiet and out of the light and she’d eventually gone off again. Layers there. Complications. Spike didn’t feel like dealing with that just now.  
  
The other minions, Spike sometimes saw too, coming and going from the bar. There was something passing for music from a blue van with all its doors slid back, and a mix of demons, vamps, and humans, some of them Anya’s Chamber of Commerce contacts, milling about, some dancing. The minions had Spike’s leave to do that, help out: they hadn’t taken any damage so no reason not to second the five of them to Willy for the night. Got Spike off the hook, which was just as well since beyond getting as impaired as Michael as rapidly as possible and keeping track of the lad, he had no plans whatsoever.  
  
Setting the bottle aside, Mike extended his right arm. “Think this might be ready,” he commented. Neutral. Not a request. Just saying it and then waiting.  
  
Spike slid off the dock, waited a moment to be sure his balance would serve, then took hold of the hand and wrist, carefully feeling how the bones lay under the diminished swelling. “Yeah, seems about right. You set?”  
  
“Go ahead.”  
  
A steady tug eased the healing wrist bones back in line, like they should be.  
  
Spike asked, “That feel better?”  
  
“Expect it will. Other one will be ready soon.”  
  
“Let’s see.” Spike inspected the other wrist with his fingertips. “Yeah, still too much swelling to hold it right. Pretty soon, though.”  
  
Getting back onto the dock seemed too much effort. Spike just leaned a folded arm on it and that was good enough.  
  
“You gonna teach me now?” Michael asked presently.  
  
“Well, not this minute. But yeah. What I can.”  
  
“All right.” Mike reached to find out where Spike was, then passed the bottle again. After a time, he said, “Could use some blood.”  
  
“Healing will do that,” Spike agreed, and lifted the non-tat arm. Took him a moment to realize Mike didn’t know about that, how to do. And likely scared to guess, maybe be wrong. “Go ahead. ‘S’not sire’s blood, can’t give you that, but I’m your elder by a good bit in the same bloodline and it’ll serve well enough. Be pigs’ blood in the morning, can’t be helped, that’s what there is.”  
  
“You sure?”  
  
“About the pigs’ blood?”  
  
“No. About this.” Carefully Michael laid a finger on Spike’s arm, then withdrew it.  
  
“Don’t make me tell you things twice, Michael. It’s tiresome.”  
  
With one good hand to steady, Mike found a convenient angle and began to feed. Drawing heavy and strong, as though from prey. Spike had to make himself pay attention and tell the lad to leave off before Mike drained him dry. Wouldn’t be fatal, only uncomfortable, awkward, and peculiar looking.  
  
After sealing the mark and letting go, Mike commented wistfully, “That was good. Strong. Like to have some more later.”  
  
“No, that’s all. Need it for myself. That will hold you till we get back.” Spike didn’t tell him what he’d tasted was the last ghostly sweetness of Slayer blood, at one remove, diluted, and now quite cold. Didn’t want him getting ideas about it, since it wasn’t for him. Wasn’t for Spike either, he reminded himself--not anytime soon. But sometime. Sometime again. Maybe….  
  
“Get back where?”  
  
“Where we’re going. All in good time, Michael. We’re here now. Enjoy the party.”  
  
“Yeah,” responded Mike, accepting it. “Sounds like a good party.”  
  
Spike didn’t know and didn’t care, so he didn’t answer. He’d been about to drifting and the feed had elevated that to a quiet float. The edge of the bay felt soft because he’d gone a little numb. More good than not. Demon came on stronger, to be watchful, and he didn’t resist or forbid.  
  
“Dawn,” said Mike, and that made Spike lift his head and take notice.  
  
And sure enough, it was Dawn, Amanda, and Kim coming with a flashlight.  
  
Well, that was three of ‘em, all armed, so he supposed there was no harm in their wandering about and it was Dawn’s party after all, even if basically nobody knew that. He didn’t catch any smell of liquor off them, nor inhalables, so they were behaving in that respect.  
  
When the light shone in his face, he raised an arm to shield his eyes. His demon found the light blinding and didn’t like it. “Quit that.”  
  
Mike said, “Hi, Dawn,” and his demon sounded like it was leaning hard on a leash, yearning closer, and no wonder: all the children smelled very fine, but particularly Dawn. Couldn’t not notice a thing like that.  
  
The light painted Michael quickly up and down. In something just short of an alarmed squeak, Dawn asked, “Michael?”  
  
Michael turned his head and asked Spike, “OK to just talk?”  
  
“Well. I s’pose. And Amanda and Kim are here too. Amanda, this is Michael. You make your manners now, so he’ll know you.”  
  
The tall girl looked around helplessly and Spike realized she didn’t know how to do. Should take up a career as a social something. Something to occupy him….  
  
“Give him your hand, ‘Manda. And Michael, you turn it loose. Let her go now, Michael. That’s fine. No damage. And Kim.” When Kim had likewise offered her hand, however nervously, and been politely released after a moment’s clasp, Spike said, “Now Michael, you gonna know them?” A nod. “Well, far as you’re concerned, they’re all mine, Michael. And you let them be. They’re not for you. They won’t hurt you and you don’t hurt them. All clear about that?”  
  
Everybody seemed agreeable if uncertain, having no manners to speak of.  
  
Amanda fidgeted in preparation, then asked, “How’s he gonna know us, Spike? His eyes are all covered up.”  
  
“Child, he can smell you as well as I do. And now he knows that, and your voice, an’ a whole lot more than somebody else’d know just looking at you. He can tell you’re nervous an’ tired and should--”  
  
“Spike,” said Dawn quickly, “I don’t really think ‘Manda wants to know that.”  
  
Spike shrugged.  
  
Dawn asked hesitantly, “Spike, are you still mad at me?”  
  
“Why would I be mad at you, Bit?”  
  
“Well, never mind. Can I ask you something, then?”  
  
“Nothing complicated an’ nothing about blood,” Spike decided.  
  
“I think I can avoid those. We were wondering. Why did you dust all those vamps in there?”  
  
“Complicated. Or Michael, do you yet know the answer?”  
  
“’Cause we didn’t stop when you said.” Mike turned his blindfolded face, to be told that was right and enough answer. Spike patted him reassuringly, which was easier than talking and probably better. Mike added quietly, “Think that other wrist….”  
  
“Well, let’s see.” Spike examined it and found the swelling a lot less. Blood had done the boy some good. Spike concentrated, then tugged to make room for the healing wrist bones to straighten. “That feel about right?”  
  
“Yeah, fine. Thanks.” Mike flexed the wrist cautiously, checking.  
  
Mike was holding himself easer, less stiffly. The shoulderblade would be healed by now and ribs probably a fair way toward re-knitting, too. Collarbone was a looser connection and would take longer. But the lad should be close to mended by morning. Able to see and move and do, anyway, Spike judged.  
  
Kim blurted, “How come he’s not mad at you, Spike?”  
  
“Why d’you children go on so about everybody being mad?” Spike complained.  
  
Dawn said, “Generally when you hit somebody until he can’t move, it’s because you’re mad at him, and he’s mad at you. And you’re not, and we don’t understand. Is it a guy thing? A vamp thing?”  
  
“It’s a you’re a bloody nuisance thing. Well, ask him if you want. Then sod off. ‘M not in the mood to talk. Go have your goddam party.”  
  
“Michael, why aren’t you mad at Spike?”  
  
“Why would I be mad, Kim? I was wrong and didn’t know no better, and he’s gonna teach me.”  
  
Some muttering and headshaking among the children Spike didn’t bother paying attention to.  
  
But Dawn, she just wouldn’t shut up and go away, like he’d told her to. “Spike, how are you gonna get home?”  
  
“Was a truck.” Spike recalled. “An’ my bike, too. Some way. Doesn’t matter”  
  
“Xander, he has his truck. He’ll come for you, all right?”  
  
“If you say,” Spike responded with complete indifference. Sunrise was a long distance off. Years, maybe. No point considering anything as far off as that.  
  
As the children moved away, still chattering, Mike said, “They smell nice. Clean. And they’re all yours? Didn’t smell you on ‘em. Maybe Kim, a little…. And Dawn, she came with you: I saw that.”  
  
“None of your concern, Michael. They’re not for you, an’ that’s all you need to know about it.”  
  
“You got a lot of girls.” Again, that insinuating, wistful tone.  
  
“You’re starting to annoy me again, Michael.” When Spike thoughtlessly pitched the empty bottle, Mike flinched and held still, not sure what was coming next. “It’s no harm. You just stay put where you are. Gonna get another. Won’t be long.”  
  
“I could come. I can walk.”  
  
“Not gonna leave you long. You stay, all right?”  
  
“If a Biter--”  
  
“I see Huey there aways. I’ll send him up to you.” Spike started toward the front, not really blaming the boy for his whinging. He was still mostly disabled and couldn’t see what might be coming, and that was frightening for a lad without much experience in being helpless. He’d have to learn that as a minion, it wasn’t his concern anymore.  
  
Spike sent Huey to look after Mike, so that was all right. And he found he didn’t even have to manage the stairs because there was a plank bar set up outside. He’d seen that before but forgotten. He surveyed what was available and chose.  
  
“Spike, you can’t--”  
  
“Willy, I’m not in the mood.”  
  
Spike was annoyed enough that his head cleared suddenly, quite a bit; his demon fierce and ready. He squared his balance and hit the stupid bugger, quite hard. Dumped him backward, out of sight. So that was all right. Enough backtalk.  
  
He turned, and there was Rupert Giles, disgustingly sober, blue shirt and jacket with the elbow patches all tweed and donnish, looking at him like Spike was a dog he mildly regretted having to put down.  
  
Spike didn’t say anything, just waited.  
  
“I thought I should tell you,” the Watcher said. “I’ve been discussing certain matters with Buffy.”  
  
And there wasn’t a whole lot Spike felt like saying about that either. So he just went on to take the fresh bottle to share with Michael, who’d be anxious.  
  
**********  
  
Sitting in the daylit front room at Casa Summers, Buffy thought it was just wretched for Spike to be absent during this grandmother and grandfather of all Giles lectures, resumed from that ghastly party she’d somehow gotten through without belting anybody, particularly Anya.  
  
True, Spike hadn’t come home last night: when Xander had gone with the truck to collect him, he’d been nowhere to be found. Which was not necessarily anything to worry about, since there were dozens of vacant houses he could have laired up in for the day. And true, he therefore wouldn’t have known this lecture session was coming. And also true that the whole collapse of the SITs/vamp cooperation thing had probably been demoralizing to him most of all, since he’d had the most invested in it. And Spike’s reaction to demoralization was generally to get blind drunk for a few days, and that was almost certainly what he was doing, but it was still wretched and cowardly of him to leave her facing Giles all alone when Giles was incredibly not only talking about expanding the SITs/vamp thing beyond anything anybody had envisioned but about trying to coax Angel in to organize it!  
  
Not that Angel couldn’t, Angel was a positive demon (pardon punnage) for methodical organization not even taking Mr. Hyde/Angelus into account, which she didn’t want to, not ever again, and not that organization wasn’t something Spike basically sucked at, and she did too; not even counting how easily the First had suckered them last night, contemptuously easy, like flicking an ant from your sandwich.  
  
Not that that hospital ward had been anything like a sandwich of course--no food images of any kind were appropriate or tolerable. That had been pretty awful in fact and Amanda had barfed several times afterward, they’d had to stop the van and let her out, and Buffy had pretty much felt like barfing too. And heartsick, as well, for Spike, having to dust all those vamps rather than let them leech onto all the bleeding patients. That was almost equal to her single-handed single night record for stakings. Or maybe even over it, possibly. She forgot exactly what the record had been, except _a lot_. And his total last night had been definitely _a lot_. All there were except three, one of them Michael, who still made her rather nervous, not that she knew him all that well. Or, really, at all. And why Spike had left those three among the walking unbreathing undead, she had no idea.  
  
Except that the occasion had been a vile set-up and sort of trap, Spike himself had been awesome and she’d been _really_ disappointed he hadn’t come home last night so she could tell him so and maybe console or at least distract him….  
  
She figured Spike felt really awful about it, but since she hadn’t been able to find him to ask him, she wasn’t 100% sure: it was risky to assume she knew or even could guess how Spike felt about so many things, so she really wanted to ask him before going all Sympathy-Girl on him, which might be exactly the wrong thing, and he certainly hadn’t come looking for her to cry on her shoulder or anything. So maybe he’d reacted some entirely different way. But it was still wretched of him not to be here.  
  
Buffy tugged at the collar of her white turtle-neck to make extra sure it covered the new mark that Giles must never, ever see.  
  
Sitting forward in the armchair while Buffy perched on the weapons chest, earnest, logical, and dauntingly certain, Giles was saying, “Spike’s experience, however disastrous in the short term, has served to make several things clear. One,” (he held up an illustrating finger, in case she wasn’t clear on what one was) “the vampires of Sunnydale have at least the potential willingness to oppose the First. Two,” (two fingers, duh) “if not outrageously provoked, they are capable of interacting with humans on something beyond a strictly predator/prey basis. At one point I observed a spontaneous game with a pie plate springing up. Although I gather in the abattoir at the hospital, some of the vampires actually did attack the Potentials-- Yes?”  
  
Amanda and Dawn were standing in the doorway. Acknowledged by Giles, they crossed to the couch like Junior High Posture and Deportment and seated themselves primly.  
  
“Yes?” Giles said again, this time slightly more sharply.  
  
“We’ve had some rearrangements,” Amanda said, and swallowed hard. “We get to know about things now. And talk about them, before they’re decided. This is America, Mr. Giles.”  
  
Dawn volunteered, “And I’m seconding for Spike.”  
  
Giles furled his brow. “You are doing _what?”_  
  
Dawn shrugged. “Deputizing. Sitting in for him.”  
  
“You are doing nothing of the sort. Buffy--”  
  
Quickly, not to lose the backup, anything was better than sitting here with Giles all alone, Buffy said, “Let them stay, Giles.” She did a huge shrug and dismissive-face. “It’s not as if they don’t live here. It isn’t as if they’re not gonna be expected to fight, no matter what happens. Not Dawn, of course. She--”  
  
“Oh,” said Giles. “ _This_ is Dawn.”  
  
They all turned _Well, yeah_ expressions on him. Not quite enough to make him remove his glasses, but enough to keep him still, giving Dawn a long, thorough, frowning inspection not affected by Dawn’s smiling brightly at him and giving him a little fingers-wiggling wave.  
  
Eventually, Giles asked Dawn, “And what are you, precisely?”  
  
Dawn gave him a smaller composed smile and folded her hands. “Resident observer for the Powers That Be.”  
  
“Good Lord.” That brought the glasses off and required a careful wipe of each lens with the handkerchief. _Like who else in the known universe carries a pocket handkerchief?_ Buffy thought. Resuming the glasses and tucking the handkerchief away, Giles said, “And what evidence can you put forward to support this remarkable claim, young lady?”  
  
“None I care to demonstrate at the present moment,” Dawn replied, cheerily unperturbed. “So it probably would be easier if you just consider me Spike and Buffy’s joint sister. Which in practical terms is what I am. Although that doesn’t mean, doesn’t in any way whatever mean that _they_ are brother and sister, not a bit of it, no.” She wiped out that implication heavily with both spread hands.  
  
“Good Lord.”  
  
“You see,” Dawn went on, “I have a personal interest in, and really strong connection to, both of them. I was originally made from Buffy, psychologically and in part physically, to begin with: you may notice the family resemblance? And of course the Slayer/Key blood thing that Glory was so hot for, there for awhile, which is no longer an active issue, by the way. And I’m currently anchored on this plane because I abstracted a piece of Spike’s soul. With his consent, of course. Even though he didn’t know that was what I was gonna take. And it was a very little, teensy, unimportant piece, hardly worth considering, except that it’s enough of an anchor to hold me together and here. And he didn’t mind, he said so. And everybody please stop looking at me that way. It’s rude and it makes me nervous.”  
  
Buffy blurted in a dire voice, “You took his _soul?”_  
  
“It’s perfectly all right, Buffy, and it’s not as if you ever asked,” Dawn retorted and flipped her hair. “Spike asked, though. He asked right away, and I told him, and he said it was all right so long as I never did it again. And I never will.” Dawn finished with a _So there_ face.  
  
Buffy burst out, “Why didn’t you take _all_ of it while you were about it?”  
  
“Well, he fought so hard to get it--that wouldn’t have been nice! And who knew then it was gonna be the problem it is now? I’m not omniscient, Buffy!”  
  
Buffy had the vague idea that was some sort of a bus but didn’t want to risk asking. She could look it up later provided she could get Dawn to spell it for her. Instead, she said, “Well, nobody said that you were,” which seemed safe. “Now Giles and I are talking about something very serious, and you can both stay on the condition that you don’t interrupt or make a nuisance of yourselves.” Finishing, Buffy smiled brightly at Giles, indicating that was all settled now and he should proceed. In case he didn’t get the point, she added, “You were saying, Giles. I think you were up to _Two.”_ She showed him two fingers, which was obscene if you held them a certain way and you were British, so she showed him a polite American _two_ , demonstrating the subtlety Spike found so appealing about her or so he said.  
  
Giles sighed. “I’ve completely lost the thread of my argument. Dawn, we shall have to discuss this, in considerable detail, some other time. But to resume. There is reason to believe vampires could constitute a quite formidable fighting force, one that would extend the limited capabilities of the Slayers in Training by several orders of magnitude. But they lack the disposition. They lack discipline and training. And they lack leadership. It’s at least evident that the Order of Aurelius still carries considerable prestige, cachet I might term it, in Sunnydale from the Master’s long term of ascendancy. Or semi-ascendency, since he was essentially stuck in the Hellmouth and therefore unable, in fact, to ascend in any meaningful way except through the agency of his adherents and minions. Such as Darla. Who, report has it, is recently deceased. Again. Which leaves as the senior member of that lineage Angel, whom we all know, and you, Buffy, once professed to love. However unwisely.  
  
“If we are to take advantage of this opportunity, it should be done properly. Angel must be enlisted.”  
  
“Is that Two or Three?” Buffy inquired, thinking that Spike was never gonna agree to this and she wasn’t all that hot about the idea herself. Angel had a way of filling a room or a situation that left very little air for anybody else to breathe. And once he started on a thing, he never turned aside, never gave up. Worse than Spike, even, who’d been bad enough with the obsessive-stalker thing. Angel was that squared and cubed and many multiples beyond.  
  
“We’d have to ask Spike first,” Dawn commented firmly.  
  
“As it happens,” Giles responded, “I’ve already discussed this with Spike and have his agreement.”  
  
“You _do?”_ Dawn asked, jaw gaping unattractively. “You _did?_ And he went _along_ with it?”  
  
“Precisely. To all of them. If necessary, he will confirm this. He is far from pleased at the prospect, as one might imagine. But he will not oppose it.”  
  
Buffy said, “I’m sorry, Giles. But I’d have to hear that from him.”  
  
Amanda whispered to Dawn, “Who’s Angel?” and Dawn shushed her. That should make an interesting explanation. And not a short one. And how would Dawn know anyway? She hadn’t even been fabricated then, or whatever the right word was. Maybe that could come right after the explanation of who or what the hell were the Powers That Be, that Giles seemed so impressed with or alarmed by, she wasn’t sure which. Buffy didn’t recall ever having heard the phrase before.  
  
But one thing was certain: Spike was gonna absolutely hate this, and if he’d given Giles his OK on it, Buffy was gonna have to hear it from him, and why, and why the hell he hadn’t said word one about it to _her_ but had let her get blindsided by Giles about it with no advance warning.  
  
Giles said, “May I assume, Buffy, that when Spike confirms what I’ve said, you’ll undertake to convince Angel to involve himself in this?”  
  
“Maybe,” Buffy said. “I’ll give you a definite maybe on that. Because if Angel gets into this, the whole game changes. And I have to think out for myself if that’s likely to be a good thing or not. Because I’m the Slayer and in the end, _I_ decide. Not you, and not the SITs, and not Spike, or the Scoobys, or my weird sister. Me.”  
  
“Understood and accepted,” said Giles, rising. “Dawn, would you care to take a short Sunday ride?”  
  
“Thank you, Mr. Giles, but I’m not supposed to ride with older men I don’t know very well in male menopause rental cars with crappy styling.” Dawn gave him a 2,000 watt smile. “Some other time, maybe.”  
  
“Good Lord.”  
  
**********  
  
About 8:00, the phone on the weapons chest rang. Being closest, Willow took it, said a few words and listened, then held the receiver out to Buffy and got out of her way to let her sit. It was Amanda, at Casa Spike, reporting that Spike was back.  
  
“But Buffy, don’t be hard on him,” Amanda begged. “He’s really down.”  
  
“You mean, he’s drunk.”  
  
“No, I don’t think so. He’s been moving those, ah, minions, Mike and the others, into a house over on Livingston. He took us and showed us, so we wouldn’t go dust any of them by mistake, and a little light furniture moving, getting the jugs of food in and everything. Helping them settle in. And we all got introduced to the minions, so they’d know we were off limits too, and when he came back here it’s Sue’s turn on the roster but Spike turned her down. Sent her away. He said that wasn’t called for and he’d changed his mind and the pigs’ blood would do well enough, he supposed he was used to it, and I have no idea what’s going on here anymore. We had it all figured out, and now this.”  
  
Buffy thought there were other people besides her with Angel on their minds. Well, that’d been the shortest experiment in social planning ever. She rubbed her neck.  
  
“Buffy? Are you still there?”  
  
“The silence you hear is a Buffy-thinking silence. OK. I’ll be right over.”  
  
When Buffy got past the hedge, she saw Spike doing something to his motorcycle under the streetlight. He glanced over his shoulder, then continued whatever he was doing. Wiping it down with a cloth, she saw, coming closer.  
  
“Hullo, Slayer.”  
  
“Hi, Spike. What’cha doing?”  
  
“Tried to carry parcels on the bike. One spilled, got all over. Nasty mess, but I think I got all of it now.” He straightened and faced her, holding the wadded cloth at his side. “So, how are you, love.”  
  
“No: how are you?”  
  
“I asked first, don’t be tiresome, pet.”  
  
“Giles came by this morning. Last night, actually, but we didn’t really get into it until this morning. Talking about Angel. He says he’s talked to you about it, too.”  
  
“Yeah, some. Bit of a stunner, that. Maybe that’s what’s needed, though. Somebody to take hold, an’ he does that, oh, yes. Takes hold and then shakes. Certainly I’m no more use to you lot.”  
  
“Thinking of doing a runner, are we?” Buffy asked, very coolly, and gestured at the motorcycle.  
  
“What? Oh, no, love, I saw that wasn’t gonna be any use neither. Cousins won’t be particularly fond of me after last night. No going that way now. Just keep on as we have been, see what develops.”  
  
“Then what do you mean, you’re no use?”  
  
“Well, bring Angel into it, he’s not about to leave the children with me, now is he? No, he’ll want that. To do some different way.” He hitched a shoulder. “And pretty much everything else, most like. I expect he may let me run errands or some such. Or maybe not even that. Doesn’t like me much, you know how that is, or some of it anyway. An’ he certain sure is not gonna like us, like we been.”  
  
Buffy considered him. If he’d been drinking, there was no longer any sign of it. No restless fidgeting, either. Very nearly, no expression unless blank weariness counted as an expression. She asked him quietly, “Spike, don’t you think I can stand up to Angel?”  
  
As quietly, he replied, “Dunno, love. Can you? Never much stood up to the Scoobys.” Then he turned half away with a wave that dismissed that remark or maybe apologized for it. “I dunno, never mind me. You’ll do what you need to. ‘S’not about me, after all. Story here started long before I came and most likely it’ll be going…awhile yet.”  
  
She heard what he’d almost said: _long after I’m gone._  
  
“What’s blown out your candle, Spike? Is it what happened at the hospital?”  
  
“Yeah, that pretty well put paid to that fine idea, all right. Absolute fucking fiasco. One thing you might want to keep in mind, though,” Spike continued, frowning soberly at the sidewalk. “It knew we were there, by the gates. Which wasn’t hard--just look an’ see us, we weren’t making no particular secret of it. But it also knew we were coming, at the hospital. Knew how to set us up, knew how to play us.  
  
“There’s gonna be somebody sayin’ it’s me. That gave us away. And I can’t say for sure that’s not so. It’s had me, right enough, and for some time, before you came and brought me out of there. But didn’t need to be me. It’s got to Red at least once, by all reports. And you seen it, times when nobody else there could, so it had to have access there, to you, to do that. When it shows in public, no matter what mask it’s using, it’s got a connection to everybody who sees it. Because there’s nothing really there at all.” He pointed to his head. “All in your mind. And I don’t think you dare let it keep getting in like that. All kind of bad things could come of it. Some way, Willow or Anya, or somebody the Watcher knows, whoever, has to find a way to keep it out, or nothing’s gonna work right. Not if it knows everything we’re doing. And can pretend to be anybody it wants. You. Me. Done both of us, at the least. Anybody who’s been dead, at least a little. So any vamp. Angel, even.” He glanced up, just a second. “When first you see him, pet, hit Peaches a good one to make certain there’s something there.”  
  
Buffy considered him further, identified the correct jeans pocket by shape, and slid his cigarettes and lighter out, maybe with some contact of a more personal nature, but she didn’t prolong or push that. She got out a cigarette and lit it, carefully without inhaling in case she coughed or barfed or did something else gross, and handed it over while he stared at her and slowly took it: a quiet little dreamlike exchange. Buffy was happy, having succeeded in surprising him.  
  
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “A really useful idea. We’ll find out how to do that.”  
  
“Yeah. Well, good, then.” A little quirk of smile and his shoulders lifting, not quite so slumped. And an eye-smile, too, looking at her and then away as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth and brightened the coal with indrawn breath.  
  
“Spike, if you say Not, it’s Not.”  
  
“No, love. ‘Tisn’t about me and not mine to say. Nor Buffy’s. It’s the Slayer has to call this one. It’s--” And then he was across the distance between and kissing her hard, hands splayed on her back and moving, taking different hold first in one place and then another. Buffy tried to hug him back as strongly, kiss him just as hard.  
  
She didn’t know where the cigarette went.


	14. Section 4: Strategy — Adjustments and Evasions

The night before Angel was due to arrive, Spike lined his minions up on the small front lawn of the house on Livingston and looked them over. Then he pointed and said, “Gonzo, come here.”  
  
Gonzo looked uneasy and stupid, but he always looked that way. He moved prompt, did exactly as he was told, and Spike couldn’t stand the sight of him.  
  
“Gonzo, you’re a pitiful excuse for a vampire.”  
  
“Yes, boss.”  
  
“Shut up and listen here. I got a war coming up and I need to clear out the useless stuff. So you’re gone.” Gonzo looked so terrified, and maybe Spike had halfway meant him to, putting it like that, that Spike sighed in exasperation and clouted him across the head. “Not _that_ , idiot. Gone from here, gone from me.” Spike reached in a pocket and pulled out folded bills, all fresh twenties. Anya’d got them for him, exchanging the wrinkled singles and fives for fresh clean bills at the bank.  
  
The two vamps, not counting Mike, he’d spared in the hospital fiasco, he’d dismissed after the party with the instruction to stay out of his sight. He owed them nothing--their lives were gift enough. But a minion who’d served awhile was due something for services rendered. Spike figured if all he could offer for leavegeld was small money, it should at least look nice.  
  
Spike dragged out Gonzo’s hand and slapped the twenty into it. “You most likely won’t last to spend it, you’re such a fucking fool, but it’s yours any road for adequate service. What’s your proper name, Gonzo?”  
  
“Rudolph, boss.”  
  
“Hell, you’re better off with ‘Gonzo.’ But that’s your call. All right, Rudolph, you gave adequate service as required. Take back your life now from my hand. Bugger off.”  
  
Dewey’s name proved to be Frank, and Spike turned him off pretty much the same, a useless waste of the space. Then he called Huey forward.  
  
“What’s your name, Huey?”  
  
Huey shrugged. “‘Huey’ does well enough.”  
  
“Now don’t you make me regret what I got thought out here. What’s your fucking name, mate?”  
  
“Egbert.”  
  
“Well, that’s terrible, you’re right. Anyway, Huey, you got some kind of glimmer of a brain and you might actually see out a century with moderate luck. If you ask Willy, he’ll probably give you a job bartending now he’s short a man. Not that you couldn’t do better, but good night jobs are hard to come by. Huey, you done me good service and we’re quits. Take your life back from my hand now and good luck to you.” Spike counted out into Huey’s hand five twenties, which pretty well broke the bank, but such things had to be done properly, or as near as possible.  
  
Huey considered the bills, then looked up remarking, “There’s generally a good game at the Wander Bar, a few nights a week. This is a good enough stake to sit in for a hand or two, anyway. See what develops. Any overage, maybe that could buy some more tasers, something.”  
  
He was a tall narrow vamp, with lank fair hair tied back and a gloomy, creased Scandinavian face, like a Michigan farmer getting news of weevils in the wheat. Spike hadn’t much bothered to look at him before, except what was necessary.  
  
Surprised by the offer, Spike started pacing, pulling a hand through his hair, back to front. “Well, I can’t support you anymore, now can I? Told you, Willy’s all brassed off I hit him, not that he didn’t have it coming, the clueless bleeder, an’ he’s given me the toss. So--”  
  
“I can fend for myself,” Huey responded. “Good pickings in a dying town. But don’t like them Biters much. Like to see ‘em taken down. If I can chip in to a war chest, kill a few more of ‘em, I won’t be displeased. If there are developments, I’ll be in touch.”  
  
“All right,” Spike responded. “In that case, you just might want to drift up to Willy’s a bit later. Might be some challenge fights at decent odds, considering I’m not real popular with the cousins just now. Amazing, how some people will let their guts rule their sense.”  
  
“That’s a fact. I just might do that.”  
  
As Huey started away in long strides, Spike faced Mike, all healed up proper and looking altogether pathetic, frightened, and woebegone. Obviously expecting to be turned away too. Of course he’d think that. Spike hadn’t considered that far.  
  
“It’s all right, Michael. I still got considerable to teach you, considering I haven’t even started.”  
  
Mike dropped down on the grass, set his face in his hands, and sobbed. Spike sat on his heels by him patiently. Finally Mike lifted his tearful face and asked, “Why is it like this? Never was like this before.”  
  
Spike lit a cigarette. “Well, I broke you proper. That means you truly gave your life into my hands. That’s what you feel now, inside you: that you don’t have control over yourself anymore. It’s pretty much knocked you back to being a fledge--heart of a child, mind of an adult, and aimless passions of a demon. Mostly the demon running things again because you surrendered control over it. Not moderate creatures, demons. With the demon in charge, every moment and every feeling seems gigantic--like that’s all there is, all you know.  
  
“This, between us now, is an attachment and an addiction and a strong dependency. Right now, you need me and have a powerful appetite for my notice and care. So the notion I might abandon you is frightening and you got noplace outside it to stand and look at it.”  
  
As little as Spike felt like explaining typical Aurelian emotional excess to what was very like a new-raised fledge and childe overwhelmed by confusion and the demon, it was the necessary thing to do and a duty he’d accepted with Mike’s submission. And it steadied him because this was about the only connection he was still certain of.  
  
The present situation had a lot in common with sitting in a locked burning house having a calm, rational discussion with your dog. But no need to further frighten the lad with notions like that.  
  
Spike said, “So long as you do what I tell you, as quick and as best you can, I’m pleased with you. If I’m not pleased, you’ll be in no doubt. So be easy with yourself about it, Michael. It’s always this way.”  
  
Michael reached out and touched Spike’s cheek, announcing blithely, “I love you.”  
  
Spike shut his eyes. “No, you don’t, Michael. That’s a different loss of control. Easy mistake to make. But you can’t know that yet. Maybe you’ll come to know the difference. But now, it’s just another way to try to hang on. Need, mostly, with maybe some liking mixed in. I’m not angry with you, Michael, but it’s no good for you to confuse things more than they already are. So leave off about it.”  
  
_Need, with some liking._ Spike held himself still until that had seared all the way through. Because that was himself, mostly. And that was Buffy. But not Dawn. She had no need of him, so the liking was freed. If Angel would only leave him Dawn, he might yet endure this.  
  
Mike asked, “Can I feed off you some more?”  
  
“No, Michael. Vampires can’t do for one another that way except now and again.”  
  
“Then I want to hunt. The pigs’ blood is crap.”  
  
“I know it is. Don’t have that figured out yet. Be patient a little longer.”  
  
“Not patient,” Mike corrected. “Hungry.”  
  
“Well, you’re gonna have to wait, aren’t you? Now shut up about it.”  
  
Mike subsided: obedient, unhappy, and trusting.  
  
A bit of a trial but still mostly a sweet-natured lad, as he’d been from the start. And it’d been this or dust him. So if the time wasn’t altogether convenient, it wasn’t Mike’s fault.  
  
Spike spent another few minutes being terrified. For much the same reasons as Michael. But Spike hadn’t given over control of himself, not altogether. Not to Buffy. Not to anyone. Even the First hadn’t had that from him, not steadily. Right or wrong, he was still making his own choices, and even wrong was better than helpless.  
  
He stood up, remarking, “Come on, then. We’ll go over to Willy’s and pick some fights.”  
  
“Can I fight, too?”  
  
“Maybe. A Monday crowd’s not much, generally. But if there’s more than what I can take, you can have some, too.”  
  
**********  
  
As usual, after breakfast Dawn went over to Casa Spike to visit and catch up on the night’s news. As usual, the SITs were doing weapons drill, and as usual Spike was on the porch, watching them judiciously from time to time. But instead of making stakes, he was counting money with bruised, swollen hands.  
  
He was sitting slightly crooked, too: the way he used to before his back finally healed. Looking critically, Dawn saw other bruises either just blooming or just fading, she wasn’t sure which.  
  
Dropping onto the step, she inquired, “Busy night at Willy’s?”  
  
Spike took the cigarette out of his mouth to respond, “Well, yes and no. Yes, quite a busy night at Willy’s, once it got goin’ and word got around. But no, not the way you mean. That’s done. I don’t work there no more.”  
  
“What were you doing, then? Besides fighting, of course.”  
  
Spike smirked. “More fighting. Let a few cousins try to get a good piece of me if they paid for the privilege. Profitable. And that also sort of required that I could hit them back.”  
  
Dawn grinned knowingly. “And you liked that.”  
  
“Oh, yes. And it seems some idiots were fool enough to lay bets. Dunno why I ever bothered tryin’ to work for it.”  
  
“Well, there’s less wear and tear,” Dawn commented, drawing two fingers down the back of his left hand. He sat quite still for a moment, then went on sorting and turning the bills to the be same way around.  
  
“How’s Michael doing?”  
  
“He’s a good lad. Just now it’s sort of like getting lumbered with the pup of one of those big breed of dog--St. Bernard, maybe. Or mastiff….” Another still pause, his eyes lifted to something faraway.  
  
“What?”  
  
“It’s just that sometimes he puts me in mind of his sire. Long while back, maybe. Before I knew him. But that’s foolish because I expect Darla brought him up right sharp.”  
  
Dawn fingered around that new and unexpected fact like an ice cube left melting on a countertop. And the fact Spike had never mentioned it before and decided to mention it now.  
  
“I don’t know Angel,” she commented after awhile.  
  
“You will.”  
  
“Well, that sounds grim.”  
  
Although she’d smiled, she got no smile back. Spike said, “You shouldn’t mind. I don’t expect he’ll notice you at all. It was Dru, that noticed children…. Anyway.” Spike stubbed out the cigarette, then began stacking the bills neatly in descending denomination. “Might be a good thing if you stood clear a ways. In terms of me. Till we see a bit more of how it’s going, an’ all. No need for you to take sides.”  
  
“No,” Dawn agreed. “That’s already done.”  
  
“Yeah. All right. What I mean is, he dislikes me something terrible, and it’s not that I ain’t given him cause lately. Go back awhile further, though, maybe I have some cause, as well.”  
  
“Spike, spit it out, for heaven’s sake.”  
  
“Right. If he figured I was fond of you, might be he’d hurt you some way to bother me. Not on account of you at all. Not that he won’t come right at me, too. He plays all the angles and he’s a bone mean son of a bitch and I don’t want you hurt, ever, on my account. So don’t you come back here, visiting like you do, until we know--”  
  
“--how it’s going to go, yeah, I got that. Not gonna do it, though, Spike. I’ll just tone it down to sneaky. I can do sneaky. And I’m not likely to be the one he’ll be watching, after all.” Dawn explained, “I asked Buffy about it last night. You want to know what she said?”  
  
“No. Don’t want you bearing tales. Hard enough to understand as it is without somebody running between and making it worse. Things go to bad farce real fast then. ‘M not in the mood for farce.”  
  
“What _are_ you in the mood for?” responded Dawn, insinuatingly innocent, and got a sharp glance that became a frowning glare. “Well, it’s your mind, Spike: I didn’t say anything.”  
  
“Let be, Bit. ‘Tisn’t funny.”  
  
Dawn eyed him critically. “If I hug you, are you gonna go all weird?”  
  
“Too late. I’m all weird already and I don’t expect--”  
  
Dawn hugged him, and that shut him up. For all that he kept his distance with her and the SITs about the same, he had a powerful hunger to be petted, held. Dawn considered that a good thing to know about him, like his being ticklish. That could be bait, or a lever.  
  
If what she’d heard so far about Angel was anything like accurate, Angel tried to keep the two sides of his nature, human and demonic, antipodal distances apart. There was Angel, and then there was awful Angelus, and never were the twain allowed to meet, ick, uck, foul unclean, get thee behind me evil soulless _thing_ and all that. Spike refused to make that kind of distinction: all Spike, all the time. But the distinction was still there in subtle ways. Dawn thought it was the human side that hungered for simple touch, contact. And it was his awareness of his demon that kept him wary of initiating it.  
  
Like how he’d behaved, introducing them to stoned mummy-headed Michael, at the party. Knowing things could go real bad, real fast, yet fond and accepting of the younger vampire. Just making sure the necessary limits were observed so nobody got hurt.  
  
She let him go with a quick arm pat, to not test the limits of extreme hugging, which was unlikely to become an Olympic event. So no extra points for extension or endurance. Or grace in the release. She told him quietly, “Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think. But even if it is, I love you and that doesn’t depend on anything but you and me. So nobody else gets to touch it. Nobody comes between.”  
  
He was breathing rather hard and had turned his face away, giving her only his blinking profile. But he hadn’t gone weird or fallen to pieces, either. He was managing. “Yeah,” he said, and then looked around and stroked his bruised, swollen knuckles down the side of her face, a quick, shy gesture that she supposed was very brave of him, under the circumstances.  
  
Dawn decided she was really quite prepared not to like Angel at all. She also decided that to live up to his advance billing, he’d have to be King Kong.  
  
**********  
  
Returning from the High School a little past four, Buffy bypassed Revello to turn on Brown and parked in front of Casa Spike. Dashing inside, she waved off the greetings, comments, and questions from the SITs she passed, in a hurry to get downstairs and tell Spike the wonderful idea she’d thought of, idle in her cubicle through the afternoon. Actually, ideas: several. And most of them mutually exclusive. But certainly one or another of them would do to quiet her frantic anxiety about Angel’s arrival.  
  
Unlike Spike’s ancient DeSoto, currently on blocks awaiting repairs, Angel’s vehicle apparently wasn’t sunproofed. He wouldn’t be setting out until dark. So it would be nine or later before he got here. Still plenty of time, she thought, skipping down the stairs.  
  
As she’d expected, she found Spike naked and asleep: sprawled prone with his head turned aside, arms and legs spread wide, suggesting he’d splatted from a height. Dim white-on-white in the basement’s enforced dusk: more guessed-at than seen. And really deep asleep: he didn’t stir while Buffy lit two of the candles of the collection locked by their dripped wax to a tray on the low cabinet nearest the bed. Neither of them liked the track lighting.  
  
Turning, starting to say his name, Buffy was surprised to find his back and flanks mottled with innumerable bruises. Grey to purple patches along his spread arms and the visible side of his face, as well. No wounds, though; no scabbing or blood.  
  
Given vampire healing, the marks looked barely hours old. Which would mean it’d happened in daylight. Puzzling.  
  
Sitting on the edge of the bed he hadn’t managed to occupy didn’t rouse him. She kissed his ear and then, as an afterthought, licked it and blew onto it, thinking about the old joke.  
  
An arm twitched. Then he blinked and scraped a hand slowly down his face. “Yeah,” he said, but it was an automatic word. He was drifting off again.  
  
Buffy tried to find an unmarked place on his shoulder to grasp and shake. “Spike. Wake up. I have an idea. We could--”  
  
“Bright. All shining.” Muzzy, blurred voice.  
  
“Spike--”  
  
A jerk of deep startlement, breath coming quick and hard; staring.  
  
Buffy shook his shoulder again. “Spike, wake up.”  
  
“Hell. Another one.”  
  
“Another what?”  
  
“’Nother fucking dream. Goddam.” He rolled to sitting beside her a moment, both hands rubbing at his eyes, then pushed through his hair. “Damn it to hell.” Abruptly he was off to the bureau, yanking on fresh clothes. T-shirt first--the reverse of usual. First priority covering the marks.  
  
“I already noticed,” Buffy mentioned dryly.  
  
“Yeah,” he said, his back still to her. “What time’s it got to be?”  
  
“Going for five. Did you have some trouble in the tunnels?”  
  
“Willy’s. Damn. Now what’s that got to do with anything?” Jeans zipped and fastened, he turned, but he was away someplace inside his head, staring at nothing and still breathing hard. Buffy resigned herself to the fact he wasn’t gonna attend to anything else until this was dealt with.  
  
She prompted, “What was the dream about?”  
  
“Well, you gave me this sort of necklace thing,” he said, as though she should remember it, unconsciously miming putting such an object around his neck. “Thin serpentine chain, a kind of medallion suspended…. An’ it meant something. There was a reason for it. Special. Something I could do with it. What the hell was it.” Hand still clasping the invisible dream-pendant, he bent his head, eyes tight shut, fighting to retrieve the memory. “I could draw it, I think--the medallion. Setting. Maybe Red…. It was for the Hellmouth. Close the Hellmouth. Yeah. If I drew it, maybe Red or Rupert could figure out--”  
  
He bolted up the stairs, and Buffy thought she knew what he’d gone in search of: a battered green spiral notebook where he attempted his systematic thinking. She thought she remembered seeing it in one of the cabinets. She checked, found it, and had it waiting when he came back down. He immediately grabbed it and the pen she also held and dropped straight down on the floor, completely intent.  
  
First he jotted notes along one side of the page, staring into space between entries. Then he tried to draw it. He got as far as a serrated circle, then crossed that out and tried again. After three more tries he flung the pen away in frustration. Then he made himself get up and retrieve it and tried yet again, this time a side view.  
  
The object he drew was dome-shaped, convex. The point of the dome was a separate protuberance, smoothly rounded. That apparently was what he’d been unable to render to his satisfaction in a frontal view, because the back of the object came quickly, a squared off serrated edge roughly drawn and a bit lopsided but evidently good enough because he set the pad on the floor and considered it without trying to improve the sketch further.  
  
“Like a chrysanthemum,” he muttered. “Clear jewel in the center.” He added that to the notes, and then _silver-colored._ Finally, when he could find nothing more to add, he looked up and noticed Buffy watching.  
  
Buffy settled onto the floor, facing him across the notebook. “How long have you been having prophetic dreams?”  
  
She didn’t think she needed to say the rest of it: _and not telling me about it?_ That, she figured, was implicit in the question, and in her having to ask at all.  
  
“Long while. Years.”  
  
“Before the dream about the alley?” She named the only such dream he’d admitted to, and which she’d therefore assumed to be unique.  
  
“Yeah. Some. More, lately. You have Slayer dreams sometimes. Do I ever expect to tell me about them?”  
  
“No,” Buffy admitted steadily. “Because I’m the Slayer. It’s part of the job description. So is telling them to everybody.”  
  
“Well, I’m not the Slayer, am I? So what I dream is my business.” He repeated the gesture of rubbing his eyes, then pushing both hands through his hair. “Mostly it’s all bollixed up, tangled….” His hands rolled and twisted, demonstrating the tangling. “An’ they’re personal. And most of ‘em are bad, all right? No point goin’ on about them. And who’d pay any attention anyway?”  
  
“I would have. If you’d told me.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, that would have gone over real good: ‘Well, Giles, you see I been fucking this vampire and sometimes he has strange dreams.’ Sure, I can see you sayin’ that. ‘Willow, last night Spike an’ me took down a wall, having a boff, and he had this dream’--”  
  
The sarcasm was bitter and brutal. The only thing that kept Buffy from smacking him was the awareness it was justified. She hadn’t realized, though, that such bitterness was still alive in him from those days. She’d thought it all reconciled, put away.  
  
“You could have told _me_ ,” she insisted.  
  
“You’re joking. Don’t you remember that talking was about all we _didn’t_ do?”  
  
“I thought we were talking now. I thought--”  
  
“Well, ‘s’not retroactive, pet. I never asked you nothing about Angel. And you never said. Never asked how he came to mark you, and yes, I know his mark when I see it. Never asked you about anything, really. And you’re not a great one to volunteer. We get by with now, and how’s the children, and what happens Tuesdays.”  
  
She said, “I guess what happens Tuesdays is that you remember all the reasons you’re angry at me and throw them in my face.”  
  
“Well, you asked, pet. This once, you asked, and I told you. So now are you pleased?”  
  
His furious eyes were blue, almost to black in the limited light. His tense face was smooth, not bulged into brutal forehead, fangs. That meant nothing, Buffy thought. He’d loosed his demon against her, blunt and ruthless, and that was what she was confronting now.  
  
“All right, I’m asking, then. How did you manage the decorative beating you’ve been hoping I wouldn’t notice or comment about?”  
  
“Wasn’t a beating, because I won. Challenge fights, up at Willy’s. Because I don’t have a job there anymore. I raised a little over four hundred fucking dollars. Enough for tasers for all the children, an’ they’re on order now. Have ‘em by the end of the week. And some extra to kick in to the bank, same as always. I pay my fucking way, Slayer. You know what else you don’t know? Wasn’t Rupert’s idea to bring in Angel. It was mine. Knew you wouldn’t listen if I brought it up. So I asked Rupert to do it for me. You pay attention to what he says. Not like me. And sure enough, Angel’s due in a couple of hours, just like I expected. You got regard for Rupert. Not much for me. You know what else? I haven’t touched that disgusting dead blood since the children, Amanda, brought it up. Can’t tolerate it no more. I been hunting. But you wouldn’t ask me about that neither. Might have told you if you’d asked, but you didn’t. Because you didn’t want to know the answer.”  
  
Buffy was hurt, appalled, demoralized. She was also toweringly angry that he’d dump all of this on her when she was strung tight to breaking over the prospect of having to deal with Angel again. Which he _knew_. After she’d backed his idea about trying out the joint patrol that’d gone so wrong. After she’d wrenched her principles practically asunder, consenting to his feeding from the SITs. When she’d forgiven and more than forgiven his feeding from _her_.  
  
Which, she suddenly thought, he’d done not only because he’d wanted to. Not only to mark her, in defiance of Angel. But in the expectation she’d blow up and throw him out. As she was so close to doing now.  
  
Not bitterness, she thought. Or not only that. Not necessarily untrue, but calculated for effect. What he was flinging at her was provocation.  
  
And the part that didn’t fit was the bruising.  
  
“So you went up to Willy’s and picked fights last night, right?”  
  
“Yeah. Not gonna live on charity here.”  
  
“And you’ve been hunting, you say,” Buffy pursued.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“So not the SITs.”  
  
“That was a stupid idea,” Spike responded sullenly…and evasively.  
  
Her ear was tuning now. Hearing not just what he said but what, by deliberate calculation, he avoided saying. “All right,” she shot back, “then tell me why, if you’re hunting to your heart’s content, after all the fine live blood, you’re so drained that you haven’t healed from surface injuries twenty hours old?”  
  
For the first time, he looked aside. He really was a terrible liar. Terrible at keeping whatever he felt off his face, out of his body language. “Well, that Michael. He needed.”  
  
“You’ve been letting him feed from you, haven’t you. That’s where the blood has gone.”  
  
“Well, I couldn’t hardly let him go out hunting on his own, could I? He--”  
  
Spike saw that pit before quite falling into it. Buffy saw it. “Because he’s an ordinary vamp with no self-control. And he would have drunk them dry. Killed them, because that’s what vamps do. Except you. You say you’ve been hunting. What’s the total kill, Spike? How many people have you killed to feed your new pet?” He didn’t have anything ready for that blunt question and tried to make silence his answer. But Buffy heard it for what it was: another evasion. “None, Spike. You haven’t killed anybody.”  
  
“Believe what you like,” Spike said sullenly. Which wasn’t an answer either. It wasn’t working even a little now.  
  
“I think I will. Nobody, Spike. You fed from them like you fed from Kim. Barely anything at all.”  
  
Very softly, he said, “There was no need.” He’d withdrawn the blustering demonic boogey man. This was only Spike.  
  
“And what’s the need of this, now? Why pick a fight and throw all this crap at me to.…” Then she saw it, because she’d seen it before. He’d bitten her because he’d intended to. His own reaction had blindsided him, but that didn’t change that he’d offered to turn for her in the expectation that she’d have a monumental fit afterward and throw him out. Then he’d seized on the opportunity of the SITs’ mini-rebellion but that hadn’t gotten him thrown out either. So now he’d put together this big collection of misleading facts and half-truths and dumped them on her, still pursuing the same dogged purpose: to provoke her into rejecting him.  
  
Buffy leaned and took his hands. She felt a twitch, but he didn’t pull away or refuse the contact, the connection. Because he never did. It wasn’t in him.  
  
He’d lost his job. Ended the arrangement with the SITs, separating from them too. Buffy would have bet he’d made some attempt to drive Dawn away. And now her. Trying to leave no hostages that could be used against him or he could be used against, either way.  
  
Already feeling she knew the answer, Buffy asked gently, “Why not just leave, Spike?”  
  
“Because I can’t, love. Never could. And that will just make everything worse, an’ he’ll hurt you on my account, and that’s not right, that you should be caught between and feel you have to defend me to keep faith. And either way, it’s terrible: if you do, or if you don’t. Send me off, love. For your own sake. I’m nothing but harm to you here.”  
  
“Do you want me to?”  
  
His face was full of love and helpless misery. And asked directly, point-blank, he answered her as he always had: with the truth. “No. I’m fucking terrified of it, love. But you should.”  
  
“Well, you’re right,” Buffy said. “Your being here will make everything harder. But your not being here would make it unbearable. If it’s hard, then it’s hard. I need you here. Don’t leave me to face this alone.”  
  
“Never could do that. Unless you said. Don’t want you hurt for me. ‘Tisn’t about me. Shouldn’t be. But it will be because he’ll make it so. Can’t help it. And neither can I. ‘Cause he’ll do everything he can to make me turn loose of you and I won’t. Not never. And I couldn’t contrive to make you do it neither. Damn stupid useless git.”  
  
“Maybe we don’t talk as much as we should,” Buffy said, and ruffled his hair with her fingers. “But you don’t fool me much, and I don’t fool you much, and maybe that’s enough. Let’s be terrified together. Let’s give him something to really get furious about. There’s time: want to have noisy, smelly sex?”  
  
“Hell, yes.”


	15. Section 4: Strategy — Hail and Farewell

Studying the pitifully childish drawing Spike had given her was much more interesting to Willow than angsting over when Angel would arrive. Just another dumb vamp, after all. She’d already resouled him once and would again if need be and give him a whole lot better reasons for not attaining “perfect happiness” than the spell’s original makers had built in. Blinding pain, for instance, as the accompaniment to an erection. That should tend to break the mood.  
  
Spike’s marginal notes referred to the setting as being like a chrysanthemum. Well, a traditional Egyptian representation of the solar disc wasn’t exactly the thing you’d expect to spring to a vamp’s mind. And the crystal would therefore be unfaceted and clear--either quartz or, Goddess help us all, diamond, depending on whether it was a low amulet for an ordinary priest or a high amulet made for the High Priest of Ra. In either case, the setting would almost certainly be the blended metal called electrum. Silver in color, as Spike’s notes specified. Now practically extinct, electrum had once been held in higher repute even than gold for fabricating magical implements.  
  
Definitely an interesting object to pop up in a vamp’s dream in such detail that Willow could recognize and put a name to it even though she’d never heard of such a thing or seen its representation.  
  
Pretty much Indiana Jones territory here, but not the headpiece of a staff this time. Same purpose, though--focus sunforce on an object. While worn. Not, it would seem, a useful accoutrement for a vamp, given that vamps tended to go all flamey in daylight conditions other than major overcast or absolutely killer smog. So what was this amulet to him, or he to the amulet, that he should dream of it?  
  
Refocusing her eyes, Willow determined that Spike’s weird aura was still fully flared, thank you. Apparently he’d done something permanent to himself in the Reconstruct Dawn spellcasting. Actually it was a little embarrassing to watch him pace, since it was so evident he and Buffy had either recently had sex or else should, right away. The limits of his pacing were the limits of where their auras converged. He didn’t lose contact, not for a second. When he paced close, his aura swarmed all over Buffy’s, enveloping and enclosing it, full of magenta flashes of tantric energy. While Buffy’s aura just ticked over its unchanging red-tinged rose pink: all Slayer, all the time. Pretty impervious to outside influence, was the Slayer. Probably not all that great in bed. Maybe that was why she chose vamps: requiring that kind of hungry single-mindedness to get through to her, physically or emotionally, at all.  
  
Not like herself and Tara, whose auras had been steadily, harmoniously in tune, peaceful and loving. Except when Tara had rejected her, left her; but Willow now remembered only the good times and the intolerable loss.  
  
At least he wasn’t assaulting Dawn’s aura, or Amanda’s, in that blatant fashion. Which in its way was odd because going by his aura, he was into serious blood debt. He was plainly healing from something and that depleted the blood energy faster than normal. Amanda and Dawn and probably Willow herself should represent major snackage. But he wasn’t paying any of them any heed. Only Buffy. Walking circles and figure eights, in orbit around her, in the front room of Casa Summers. Willow decided not to get within grabbing distance anytime soon. And she called to mind the sequence of a freeze spell that would stop him in his tracks. Always best to be prepared.  
  
He must have channeled aetheric energies way past what a vampire normally could, to result in a permanent extension of the aura. That or contacted something so large and powerful that the contact itself was the operative cause of the change. Maybe both.  
  
The amulet was a focus. And he’d become a channel. Although it would probably fry him from the inside out to use it, he had likely become an appropriate conduit for whatever the amulet put out by way of energy. And Somebody now was hinting to him about it by way of dreams.  
  
Close the Hellmouth, he’d said and written in his absurd Victorian cursive in the notes. Maybe so. Somebody was clearly interested in matching up the two of them, the vampire and the amulet.  
  
The amulet was so highly identifiable an object that no extensive search should be required to turn one up. Willow had a number of sources for Egyptian antiquities, and Anya had even more, suppliers for the Magic Box. And with a currently worthless metal as the setting, it was possible the crystal wouldn’t be recognized for what it was because of its lack of faceting. So it might even be possible to come by one cheap.  
  
Sight returning to normal, Willow was trying to figure how to make acquisition of this object the means of prying out of Spike the knowledge she required: the knowledge of how to bring Tara back. Not the contrary, rejecting aspects--just the loving ones. Surely he couldn’t be stupid or suicidal enough to actually _want_ the amulet. He had just sense enough to guess it was magical and therefore to dutifully turn his drawing over to a witch for investigation. Not enough sense to have the least idea what it actually was or how it worked. So maybe he _was_ stupid enough. If so, Willow might have a lever.  
  
There was a knock at the front door, at which point it occurred to Buffy that Angel hadn’t been in the house since the last round of wards and protections and therefore needed an invitation from a resident to enter, and dashed off to answer the knock. Sullen and watchful, Spike trailed along behind.  
  
As Angel came in and stood gravely listening to whatever Buffy was babbling, his expression changed and he saw Spike. Pushing Buffy heedlessly aside, Angel went after Spike, immediate and ferocious, so nobody could have mistaken him for anything but a vampire though he didn’t go game-faced. His first blow knocked Spike half the length of the hall. Spike came up game-faced just in time to be hit again and flung back into the cellar door. Then they were both at it, Angel shoving Buffy off when she tried to intervene, staying bare-knuckles Marquis of Queensbury style, throwing big roundhouse punches, murderously direct, enough to break bone when they landed. Spike used a different style, dropping onto his hands, reversed, and uncoiling to kick Angel’s knee. The kick connected but had no effect on Angel’s advance. As Spike tumbled away, Angel got in a kick of his own, to Spike’s ribs. That stopped Spike long enough that Angel could lean down and grab him by the scruff of the neck, haul him into the air, and fold arms before and behind with the plain intention of breaking Spike’s neck and wrenching his head off. Then it stopped. Angel fell straight backward with a crash that rattled the remaining windows. Spike rose shakily, leaning against the wall, bent as though guarding broken ribs. In his left hand was a taser.  
  
He said, “Welcome to the new century, Peaches.”  
  
Then he collapsed, coughing blood.  
  
**********  
  
Before Angel could move he could talk and he did. “Buffy, you know what he is. How could you let a thing like that corrupt you?”  
  
Somehow Buffy managed not to hit him or apologize and beg his forgiveness, his approval, both of which she wanted intensely to do. “That ‘thing’ kept me alive almost a whole year, despite the fact that I beat him up every chance I got. And he took it. Because he loves me.”  
  
“I noticed that. You stink of him. How could you let that little grinning weasel into your bed? Let him _feed_ on you? God!”  
  
Buffy clapped a hand to her neck. She couldn’t help it. As if she could conceal the evidence that Buffy was _Not a Nice Girl_.  
  
Sitting leaned back against the staircase, Angel tested out muscular control of one arm, then the other, like his almost infinitely slow Tai-chi routines. He rolled on, “Whatever he’s done to get his hooks into you, it ends now. Don’t worry, Buffy. I’ll take care of him.”  
  
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. He’s mine, and under my protection. You leave him alone.”  
  
Angel gave her a hooded glance. “Oh, is he hiding behind women’s skirts again? I might have expected that. Just give me a few more minutes and I’ll go pay him a call. See if he’s _man_ enough to answer me and come for his whipping. I’ll take that little toy away from him first this time and then see how things go.”  
  
Senior-Prom Buffy was all distressed and demoralized. As she retreated, the Slayer came to the fore. And the Slayer looked at Angel with different eyes. “Angel, I asked you to come to help prevent an apocalypse. We have them here from time to time. I died in the last one, as perhaps you recall. Not counting the one Willow almost set off, of course. If you can’t get your mind out of my pants and off my neck long enough to consider stopping the end of the world, stopping the First that tried to make you commit suicide not so very long ago, then go back to L.A. because you’re no use to me. Anybody who helps me with this is my ally. Anybody who gets in my way is my enemy. Which do you want to be, Angel? Go after Spike again and he won’t have to stop you: I will. My allies are not allowed to murder each other. Now is any part of that not clear to you?”  
  
Angel regarded her admiringly. “Buffy, you’re magnificent when you’re ruthless. What you say is fine with me, just as soon as I get this one little piece of unfinished business out of the way.”  
  
As Angel rose, towering over her by more than a foot, big and dark and intractable, Buffy reached up and closed a hand around his throat, lifting him onto his toes. Guys _really_ hated it when she did that. Showing him the stake she’d collected from the bag by the kitchen door, she told him flatly, “Leave Spike alone.”  
  
His dark eyes stopped being admiring. They no longer held any human expression at all. “Fine, then. As long as he leaves you alone.” It probably wasn’t easy to talk while suspended by the throat, but Angel managed without seeming effort. “The next time I see him, the next time I smell him on you, the next time he obliges me to notice he isn’t in hell where monsters like him belong, I’ll remedy that oversight. I’ll add to that. I don’t smell him on anyone I come in contact with. I don’t hear his name. His wretched existence is not to be acknowledged in my presence. Leave helping you out of it: those are my terms for not dusting the bastard.” He looked down at her. “A nice show, Buffy, but you are not going to stake me over that contemptible weasel and we both know it. Now go get clean. Cleaner. Then I’ll be glad to discuss the situation. I’ve dealt with one damaged Slayer. I’m willing to deal with another.”  
  
Buffy had been braced against Angel’s disapproval. But she hadn’t been prepared for his blunt, visceral disgust. Because he declared her dirty, she felt so and knew that no arguments would persuade him otherwise. All there were, were feelings, and Angel considered feelings a weakness and a danger. The one time he’d given in to them, it had nearly destroyed them both. It had only been by shutting out and denying passion that he’d left her.  
  
It was just about impossible to maintain her own convictions against someone so absolutely convinced of his own righteousness. Especially when he was speaking Received Truth: what she herself had believed unquestioningly until the persistent and finally unavoidable fact of Spike had forced her away from certainties into exceptions, distinctions, justifications. Until, however unwillingly, she’d started thinking and judging and feeling for herself.  
  
Buffy let Angel go and started dully up the stairs to shower.  
  
**********  
  
Naturally Spike wasn’t being merely difficult. He was being impossible. In wincing game face, lying on the front room couch at Casa Spike where Dawn and Amanda had brought him, he wouldn’t let any of the SITs near him, yelled at them when they approached, and broke down into more bloody coughing afterward, so they stayed back, not because of the yelling but because of the coughing. Dawn figured that one of the broken ribs had punctured a lung.  
  
That wasn’t a serious injury by itself. But healing required extra energy, extra blood, and he wouldn’t take it from any of them. Didn’t trust his restraint, to stop before he’d taken too much. Which again wouldn’t have been a problem except that he refused the stored pigs’ blood, too. Dawn made up a mug, heated it and everything, and he slapped it across the room.  
  
Dawn looked at the resultant mess, then her empty hand. “Spike, you look like shit. You have to--”  
  
“Doesn’t signify. How I look,” he responded, on just enough breath to get the words out. “Let me alone. Little while. Get myself gone.”  
  
And probably it was true: whatever didn’t kill him outright would heal eventually. But if he didn’t feed, it would take halfway to forever and he’d be a good part of the way to starving by then. Dawn had never seen a starved vampire. As gaunt as Spike’s face had already gone, she didn’t think she wanted to, either.  
  
He needed quite a lot of blood and he needed it now. And Dawn could think of no way to make him drink the pigs’ blood if he continued to refuse.  
  
Then Suzanne came from the kitchen with another mug. She went straight to the couch and sat on her heels there, holding the cup out. Spike shut his eyes a moment and then took it, downed the contents, and handed it back, directing softly, “Get away.”  
  
Rising, backing off, Sue remarked, “Well, it was my turn next anyway,” as though daring anybody to argue with her. Dawn then noticed Sue had a paper napkin taped to her left forearm.  
  
Vi said to Amanda, “Get the roster.”  
  
So without any more discussion, that was how they did it--in turn, according to the roster. Dawn would fill the mug a quarter full of pigs’ blood, then a SIT would cut herself and fill the mug the rest of the way. And apparently the mixture remained tolerable. Although Spike almost certainly noticed, he didn’t remark on it, just drank it down. And though nobody required it of her, Dawn took a turn too, last of all. And with that mugful in his hands, still untouched, Spike looked until he found her, hanging toward the back. He kept looking at her while he drank it. Dawn didn’t know what to make of that look, but anyway he didn’t seem mad or inclined to pitch a fit about it, which was really all she cared about.  
  
Spike set the mug on the floor. When he looked up, the gauntness was gone from his face again, he’d shed game face, and no bruise-shadows remained either. “Here,” he said, and they all knew to gather to that command. “Hoped this wouldn’t happen. Not surprised it has. The mission is still the mission, children. Don’t you be foolish about this now. Don’t have to like the man to mind him. Just ‘cause he won’t spoil you like I done, give in to all your vapors and your whims, he’ll still use you right. Be sparing of you. If there’s anybody values Slayers nearly as much as me, it’s Angel. So you mind him. Don’t dispute with him. He won’t put up with it like I do. He’s here because I wanted him here. Because he’ll do things I can’t. So you behave for him. All right?”  
  
Amanda, closest to the couch, set her hand on Spike’s arm and he didn’t object. Amanda said, “What are you gonna do, Spike?”  
  
“Well, you call in a bloke to do a job of work for you, a plumber or a carpenter, first thing you do is get out of his way. Let him do his work. And if he didn’t do things different from me, there’d be no use to calling him in, now would there? So you keep what you know, and still you learn whatever you can because Angel, he’s a true master when it comes to beating things down and seeing that they stay beat down. You learn from him every way you can, even if some of the things, what you learn is that you never want to do them again. That’s useful too sometimes. So come take your leave of me, children. An’ then wash, so he won’t smell me on you and make a big noise about it like he does.”  
  
The SITs went one at a time and knelt by the couch and Spike clasped hands with them and kissed each one on the forehead, something he’d never done before, so quite a few got pretty emotional about it. When Kim came and knelt, Spike touched her neck and told her, “He gives you any grief about this, say it was my fault. Say I snuck up on you.”  
  
“Won’t say what’s not true, Spike.”  
  
“Then best to say nothing, let him think what he pleases. But don’t you take any blame ‘cause there’s none due. You all been fine children and I have no complaint of you except that you’re bossy and willful, and I never yet knew a fine lady who wasn’t, so no matter. And you been kind to me more than any like number of humans I’ve ever known in this life or that other, that was before. Don’t you let anybody make you ashamed of it. We know what’s so. That’s enough.”  
  
When he’d finished with all of the SITs, he gave Dawn a look and she gave him one right back because she wasn’t going to take part in his little leavetaking ceremony. Absolutely no frelling way, José.  
  
Although it took him two tries, he got up unassisted, and Dawn followed right along to the door and then out. And waiting outside was big, looming Michael, which startled Dawn a bit. Michael took Spike around the shoulders and pulled him a little to leaning, remarking as they walked on, “Didn’t want to interrupt. Besides, I couldn’t get in. Didn’t like to ask. All those girls. They still yours, Spike?”  
  
“Far as you’re concerned, yes.”  
  
“And Dawn too?”  
  
“Dawn too. Specially Dawn.” Looking around at her, Spike added, “Bit, I never wanted to smell you as food. Now I do. Wish you hadn’t done that.”  
  
Since it was done, Dawn saw no reason to say anything about it. Anyway it wasn’t as if she’d made him drink it. “What is _with_ that Angel, Spike? He hadn’t even gotten his hellos finished!”  
  
“Well, part of it’s me. I don’t deny it. He could tell your sis and I had been together an’ he don’t like that at all. But part is that he hates his demon. I expect that when he got that soul, it went to war with his demon and he sided against the demon and has never made peace with it since. Dunno, actually: I wasn’t there. Didn’t learn about it till years afterward. Calls his demon by a different name. Pretends it’s got nothing to do with him, with Angel. Shuts it out, as best he can. Maybe it’s the kind of soul he got, I dunno. The curse, so he’s either all one, or all the other. Me and my demon get on fine, most of the time. It’s reasonable. I let it have what it needs and it doesn’t give me much grief, by and large, so long as I give it due respect. Soul trying to horn in now, take over the whole doings, but I won’t agree to that. So I expect because I done different, didn’t settle down to a menu of rats and moping for a hundred years before finding a Slayer I wanted to dance with, he figures I’m like his demon. Needing to be put down hard and kept down. Don’t like his demon much myself. They’re both mean, cruel bastards, only Angelus enjoys it more. Should have just taken off. Not been there. But Buffy wouldn’t have that. Tell me not to do nothing dumb, Bit.”  
  
“Don’t do anything dumb, Spike.”  
  
“That’s real good advice. I’ll try hard to keep to it.”  
  
Mike said, “This Angel. Angelus. He’s my sire, right?”  
  
“Seems so. Wouldn’t bring it up to him if I were you, though. Might make him try to think up a third expression an’ die of the strain.”  
  
“And he’s your sire,” Mike pursued.  
  
“On about two bounces. But yeah, as near as makes no difference anymore. Let me down here a minute, lad. Need to collect myself.”  
  
Collecting himself apparently consisted of sitting on the grass at the edge of the sidewalk with knees tucked tight, arms laid across them, and head bent on top. After awhile Mike took a crosslegged seat on the sidewalk, and Dawn settled next to Spike and claimed the tatted arm, that was hers, cheek tucked tight against it. And after they’d all sogged and been furious or forlorn or quietly miserable, or whatever they were being, for awhile, Spike stirred to light a cigarette, remarking, “No punishment like getting exactly what you asked for. Could be worse. He could have dusted me dead. Or I could have done the like to him, and Buffy, she’d never have forgiven me that. Still has a fondness for old Peaches, she does. Girl never forgets the vamp who first sets his mark on her…. If he turns her from me, I’ll do ‘em both. Fire, maybe. No, they might get out. Taser ‘em first, then. Tie ‘em down. Afterward set the fire.” He glanced at Dawn. “Figure that’s dumb, Bit?”  
  
“Thinking about it’s OK,” responded Dawn judiciously. “Doing it would be dumb.”  
  
“Expect you’re right. And don’t you pay me no mind, Michael. Don’t go off and do something I only talked about, figuring it’s what I want. I’ll tell you plain what I want. You won’t be in no doubt whatever about it.”  
  
Mike said, “Since he’s your sire, and mine, what does that make us to each other?”  
  
Spike looked at him, then drew on the cigarette and breathed out smoke. Apparently the punctured lung had sealed itself although the ribs were still probably no treat. “Nothing whatever. What you are is my minion because you submitted and I accepted. An’ you’re a bit more awake than you were, aren’t you?”  
  
“Maybe. Hard to tell. How about we all go someplace, get drunk.”  
  
Dawn couldn’t help it: she giggled. Maybe the tone of voice, or the absolute seriousness. Or the notion of getting drunk for the very first time in the company of two vampires to whom she smelled like food.  
  
“Wouldn’t be much fun for you, Bit. Just watching, an’ all.”  
  
“They have cards at the Bronze,” Dawn replied, stifling her disappointment that she wasn’t to be allowed to drink anything but soda. She thought she might be able to sneak something from Michael, who probably wasn’t anything like as strict as Spike, being less socialized and still largely submerged in his demon. “We could play Crazy Eights. Or even poker, on credit: penny, nickel, dime. You both would end up owing me vast fortunes. If I go home, Spike, I’m going to end up hitting somebody and getting squashed like a bug. Buffy has Willow, and probably Xander, and probably Giles by now, he told her to phone when Angel got in. Big Scooby conference. She doesn’t need me there too. I’m not going home, Spike,” Dawn finished in a dire tone that let him know it was an ultimatum and he’d better take her seriously or he’d suffer the unspecified but severe consequences. “But if I come, no vamp face, and no fights unless you take them outside, otherwise I’d be _sooo_ mortified!”  
  
“See what you mean,” Mike remarked to Spike. “Bossy.”  
  
“Well, all fine ladies are, so I expect it’s a mark of quality. Bit, you go on back and tell the children where you’ll be and have them pass it along quiet to the Slayer, so she won’t be worrying about you. We’ll see if my old bike will carry three. I figure it should if you don’t jump around too much.”  
  
Dawn made a high-pitched _whee_ noise and ran off to do as she’d been told.  
  
**********  
  
Dawn already knew vamps drank liquor almost exclusively for effect: to quiet the nervous energy continually boiling in them when that energy had no other outlet. Spike hated any kind of fruit schnapps, but he’d drink it when there was nothing else. Sober, vamps were jittery, bad-tempered, and impulsive--in a kind of permanent attack mode. The times Spike had gotten into serious trouble weren’t the times he was drunk but the times when he wasn’t.  
  
And vamps were hard-wired oral aggressive. Dawn suspected Spike smoked as a kind of elaborate nervous tic: something to do with his mouth, with his hands. Vamps bit. And they drank. And they talked. Endlessly.  
  
Which was absolutely fine with Dawn because she almost never had gotten a chance to see Spike in the company of another vampire. And the talk was hair-raisingly, eye-poppingly blunt. Apparently vamps weren’t big on innocuous chat. As in most things, they went straight for the throat and worried and tossed the thing until they’d wrested every drop of juice from it. Then they’d go on to something else and do the same.  
  
Having settled themselves at one of the Bronze booths (Dawn and Spike on one side of the table, with Dawn on the inside, and Michael opposite), Spike bought a bottle and a Cherry Coke, and ordered food, never taking his eyes off Dawn for a second. When he came back, with completely humorless application, Mike and Spike (Dawn had to giggle, because it sounded like a TV series about a couple of cartoon animals) threw back successive water-tumbler sized shots, at least three apiece in under fifteen minutes. Then, with the energy boil apparently reduced to a comfortable simmer--what Dawn, from long observation, had come to think of as “coasting”--the two vamps eased back, started in on the spicy wings and blooming onion that were Spike’s favorites, settled themselves more comfortably, and talked.  
  
The topic was Michael’s wanting to know why he shouldn’t eat Dawn.  
  
Out of politeness, both of them were in human face. But Dawn had not the least moment’s doubt she was sitting in the middle of a couple of vamps. Big-eyed and fascinated, she pulled soda through the straw, knowing her life was absolutely on the line here and at the same time that she was in more danger from invading rabid wombats than from Mike because Spike would kill somebody--if necessary and available, several somebodies--to keep her from harm.  
  
And that was where it started, Spike’s first reason: “Well, because she’s mine, an’ I said no.” He didn’t sound the least annoyed. Just explaining. It made Dawn shiver, mostly happily.  
  
“But now, suppose she wasn’t. Just suppose,” Mike responded, frowning in a way some older girl might have found really adorable. Forehead wrinkled up but not in a vamp way, brows drawn, wide eyes thoughtful, not angry at all either. Seriously handsome and maybe even cute, if somebody were an older girl. “Suppose I was just to come across her, before. Maybe she’d still be yours, but I wouldn’t know that, and you wouldn’t have forbid me. Why not then?”  
  
“Well, you tell me why not, Michael.”  
  
“Don’t know any reason. That’s why I’m asking. Because your forbidding me doesn’t forbid you. I don’t see why you don’t eat her. Since she smells so nice.”  
  
That presumably was a compliment, because a look and an approving smile came with it. Definitely shiver-worthy.  
  
Spike stopped eating long enough to wipe his fingers on several napkins, poured his tumbler half full and drank some. “Well, all right, Michael, we’ll play your pretend game awhile. Tell me: do you like Dawn?”  
  
“Certainly do. Smells really nice. Bet she’d taste nice, too.”  
  
“Not the same thing. D’you like her this minute, just sitting here and having her soda, all peaceable. Nobody hunting, nobody escaping.”  
  
Mike considered. “I suppose. Could always eat her afterward. Could be looking forward to that.”  
  
“But then she’d be gone, y’see. No more Dawn, never again.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s right. Then I’d look for the next one.”  
  
“But all that’s Dawn except her blood, all that would be lost. How nice she looks, and how her eyes get big when she’s listening real hard, hard enough to stop jabbering herself, and how glad I am to see her, and how fine it feels to have her sitting right here next to me, all warm an’ happy an’ just the least bit scared but no more than what’s fun, and everything about Dawn that’s not about me at all, that I don’t even know but might someday come to discover…all gone to make a meal for a vamp. Terrible waste, Michael. Disproportionate, all that she is, compared to all you want of her. Like you get an ice-cream cone, say, and toss out the ice cream and just eat the cone. You missed the best part.”  
  
“I hear that,” Mike responded, still frowning, “and I know what you mean by it, I understand. But that doesn’t change that she’d be fine eating, and that’s what I want from her. All the rest, that’s no concern of mine.”  
  
“Well, we’ll take this from another direction because I know how brave Dawn is, we’re not truly scaring her at all. And I know it’s a fair question, that you truly want to know. I’ll match your question with another here. Is there anybody at all, you’re glad just to see them? That whatever you’re doing is better, just because they’re there, even if what you’re doin’ is pretty much shit? That you’re not thinking all the while how to do ‘em or eat ‘em or start a fight with them, no plans for them at all, just there in the same time and place, and that’s so fine you feel like you could just bust apart with how really brilliant it is?”  
  
Mike bent his head, then displaced energy into pouring and downing another drink. They were both very like cats in that, Dawn thought: motions aside to send the impulse some other way, not straight ahead into conflict. She wondered if they were aware of it that way or if the impulse to turn aside just came and was taken at face value, without the meaning. She’d ask Spike later.  
  
Mike said, “You said I was to let that be.”  
  
“For now, I take that back. You go ahead, whatever it is.”  
  
“You.”  
  
“D’you want to eat me, Michael? Because it would be natural enough. You fed off me several times now. You know you can, that you can make food of my blood. Not exactly the same as Dawn here, but sufficient. Not that I’d let you, I’d have you down on your back again so fast your head wouldn’t know when it came off. Just pretending here.”  
  
Spike said that so comfortably, in such a friendly tone. And Mike looked visibly relieved to be assured that even if killing Spike was something he truly wanted, it wasn’t going to happen. Reassured by the limits.  
  
“Sometimes,” Mike admitted. “When you won’t let me hunt. When I’m hungry.”  
  
“Again, that’s natural. Get ‘em hungry enough, even humans will eat one another.”  
  
“Donner Pass,” said Mike immediately. “Been there, heard that story. Yeah…but then again, not really, because I know you’ll see I get to feed some way. You won’t forget me. I never been as hungry as all that, that I’d really want to drink you dry and then dust you so’s you couldn’t come back at me for it, after.”  
  
But he’d thought out the stages, Dawn noticed. The steps that would be required. Dawn suspected that was the demon of it.  
  
“Well, why not, Michael? I’m food to you, not all that different from Bit, except not nearly as good.”  
  
“Got you now,” said Mike, grinning and happy, and grabbed Spike’s tat hand. “Because then you’d be gone. I see that.”  
  
Spike patted Mike’s hand before calmly removing his own to tear off some more sections of onion. “These ain’t much good when they get cold.”  
  
Thus instructed, Mike pulled some apart for himself and scooped them onto his plate.  
  
“You’re a bright lad, Michael, and it’s a true pleasure to watch you comin’ out from underneath the demon the way you are. I like seeing that.”  
  
Mouth full and hands occupied, Mike nodded to indicate he’d understood.  
  
Spike went on, “If I was to make a meal of Bit, here, drink her up, every drop, likely I’d need nothing else for three, four days. Maybe as long as a week. But I’d miss her forever. And there’s no proportion to that, Michael. And the truth is, she don’t belong to me. That’s just a way to say. The truth is, I belong to her, and that makes me happier than I can tell you. There was a time, since we knew each other, you and me, that she was gone, an’ there was nothing I wouldn’t have done to get her back, safe. If me walking into the sunlight would have done it, I’d have done that in a second, and been all kinds of glad about it too, if it meant she’d be back, even if I was not to have her company.”  
  
That called for a real hard hug, and Dawn made sure that need was supplied. And Spike hugged her back, as unself-conscious and frank in this as in discussing the prospect of turning her into dinner. Dawn ignored with determination the fact that his fingers were sticky and left marks. And her orientation changed. She was no longer sitting with a rectangular table between her and possibly dangerous Michael: she was sitting next to Spike, and suspected she took almost as much gladness in that as he’d said he did.  
  
When the hug was done and they both felt like letting go, Spike went on, “Before I got mine back, I sort of had the idea that the soul was a thing that would yell at me _don’t do this, don’t do that_. That it was into forbidding, like I’m doing with you for this time. An’ sometimes, it does do that. Don’t have it properly tuned and accustomed to being in a vampire, I expect. Instead of that, what’s come to me from it, so far as I notice or understand, is a very sharp sense of proportion. What a thing costs, compared to what it’s worth. A meal’s not worth a life, Michael. It doesn’t fit, and it’s not fit. I’ll do somebody in a second for crossing me, or even for being in my way, that’s just their bad luck. But not for a meal. I’ve come to understand that, and may understand more when the damn soul gets itself settled in and figures out I’m a vamp and not apt to change that anytime soon, which I really wish it’d get the hell done, because it’s been making a terrible nuisance of itself lately. Anyway.” All the buffalo wings were gone, and Spike cleaned his fingers again by dipping them in the water glass (the one with actual water in it) and then rubbing them hard with the remaining clean napkins. Then he lit a cigarette, which the Bronze still allowed. “So despite Dawn smelling all kinds of good, like she does, she’s not food to me, nor a meal. Just Dawn. And because I know I’d miss her something terrible if she was gone, and because that’s what I’m for, I’ll keep all harm from her every way I know and every way I can, while I last. And in most ways, harm is what she calls harm, not what I judge it as. Because I belong to her and not the other way around. And I’d be real pleased if you got to where you could see it like that too, Michael. But I wouldn’t have you say anything but what’s so.”  
  
Copying Spike, Mike also cleaned his hands. “I miss you when you’re gone,” he told Spike. “I’m scared. Don’t know how to do. Go and do some damn stupid thing right off. Don’t like it when you’re gone.”  
  
Spike reached across and ruffled Mike’s hair. “You’re a good lad. You’ll do fine. And I won’t leave you for long nor turn you loose until I figure you can manage and go on from there on your own. Not if there’s any way I can help it.”  
  
Mike’s face turned anxious but he didn’t say anything.  
  
“However,” Spike went on, “gonna have to leave you a little while. Can leave you here, if you want, or back at the other place. It’s coming onto midnight, an’ time I got Bit home or she’ll catch hell.”  
  
The look Mike gave her made Dawn figure she’d graduated from lunch to rival, which she supposed was one step up the food chain but not much improvement from her point of view. She thought Mike was jealous of anybody who took any substantial part of Spike’s attention away from him. But Spike had warned him off in terms not even a fledge could misunderstand, and Dawn kept her taser about her at all times, so Mike’s momentary resentment didn’t worry her. Tomorrow she’d see him and he’d have forgotten all about it, be some different way. He changed almost while you watched.  
  
After a precautionary visit to the restroom, Dawn returned to find Mike grousing about having to be left anywhere and Spike being patient but offering only the two options. Mike decided to stay, so she and Spike left together.  
  
Because Mike had stayed, Dawn got to ride behind instead of straddling the engine housing, which could get pretty hot. Behind was better. As Spike turned the key and kicked the engine alive, Dawn finished tying her hair back (Spike had forgotten to make her wear the helmet), then hugged him around the waist, the signal she was ready. Maybe mindful of his helmetless passenger, he made no great speed and took the corners slow, easy, and wide. Dawn enjoyed leaning into the turns and the motion and the rush of air, even though it prevented conversation.  
  
She was a little surprised to notice he’d gone long, all the way to the end of Brown, before taking a cross street onto Revello: dropping to a walking pace and doing something to the controls so that the bike made twice the noise. Then Dawn knew and began pounding his shoulder because he was so fucking sneaky and hadn’t said word one about it to her. As a figure came running through the dark adjoining yard, Spike braked hard. Dawn did a floundering dismount as Buffy sprang to the back saddle so hard and fast she nearly knocked the bike over but Spike gunned the engine just the same and took off, something like 50 from a standing start with the bike still tilted and Buffy not even properly in place and not wearing a helmet, her hair all streaming out behind her. Like some sort of fucking circus act. Like acrobats. The red rear brake lights flashed at the corner and then they were gone except for the attenuating growl.


	16. Section 5: Into the Dark — Penultimate Arrangements

Spike put a good pad of distance between them and Revello. Letting the bike run full out, he visualized it like a map in a movie and a red line lengthening to show distance and direction when in fact the actors were just trudging a few feet from soundstage 13 to soundstage 14--from one set to the next. Because only the distance was important, not the destination. Because the fact was, they weren’t going anywhere. The fact was they were going Nowhere. So anywhere would do.  
  
There were still some farms, mostly long abandoned, at Sunnydale’s margins. Spotting a dirt track winding off, he slowed and took it, headlight showing only a few yards ahead, blocked by tall patchy stands of weeds as the track twisted. He slowed more to navigate among the numerous deep potholes. Bike’s suspension needed work. Well, maybe sometime.  
  
He didn’t know how far away Angel could sense or even smell him, but this should be enough distance that following would take awhile; and the wretched track would jar the hell out of a big car like Angel’s convertible. Spike would hear anything like that coming long before it arrived. Spotting the dark sag-roofed mass of the farmhouse, he turned toward it, slowed to stopping, and just let the bike heel over, tumbling to get his left leg clear but otherwise not caring how he landed, Buffy more graceful about it with likely a keener kinesthetic sense of the bike’s motion, so she’d felt it tipping before he’d actually decided to just let it drop. His careless tumble was made more fluid by Buffy’s elegant tuck-and-roll, like the whole thing was a planned and practiced maneuver, bit of a trick, and should have a Ta Da and maybe a hand-holding joint bow, applause, at the finish.  
  
She even thought, gathering herself against and across him, not to lean on the ribs. Then her splendid hot mouth came down, and his arms found the strength after all to lift and clasp her, and it was good like that. Good any way at all.  
  
So many things not in need of saying. How he’d done the slow, loud approach just in hope of her. How she’d recognized the sound of the bike and yanked a knee-length sleeping T over the whatever or the nothing she’d had on, and down the roof and the tree the old way and running, the sound of it hope to her too, all like something planned but none of it planned, just one of their frequent magical convergences.  
  
Standing still, he often floundered. But in motion he was seldom wrong and then the affinities of motion took over and she was there, as often as not, no need and no use to explanations, that’s just how it was: the inevitabilities of their coming together when they were both moving right. Always converging or on their way to converging, even when he couldn’t see it. After all this while, he should have some faith in it but he never had anything more than hope and wishing and so lonely for her.  
  
They’d landed on a slight slope. Not with the motion of the fall but a new motion, more by their own internal momentum than by gravity, they did a slow rolling tumble to the bottom, she still somehow putting no weight on the sore ribs when she was at the topside of the roll and holding the almost-no-distance and supporting him above her as the roll took her underneath. Favoring the ribs as he did himself, seemingly with no thought, just automatic and a part of the motion. So kind in her strength. So thoughtful and easily aware.  
  
When they came to rest that second time, she was weeping, sobbing, her tears more on his face than her own, so that he wasn’t sure if he was crying too or not. He stroked the lovely soft hair back from her face making soothing noises, some words, some not. And so strange to be all humming inside with that small sup of Slayer blood and it not hers, as though he’d been obscurely unfaithful and yet not, since it was Dawn’s; strange to be all fed up well and yet so emptily exhausted that he wanted only to lie like this, clasped in her arms and kissing her, do nothing else, out until the end of his forever.  
  
“--go,” she was muttering, “and keep going, not ever come back, can’t we do that? Just run and run and never stop--?”  
  
“Of course we can, love. Got all we need right here, enough for gas as far as Canada maybe, an’ I don’t need much, hardly anything, there are ways an’ it’ll all be for you, fine food and fine clothes and quiet all about, nothing to make my princess sad--” Then he had to stop because that was soothing-Dru-babble, he could always come up with that, some fantasy or another spilling out, didn’t matter, anything but outright unconscious he could do that but Buffy wasn’t a lunatic to be placated with soothing lies, she deserved better, she deserved sense--  
  
“Hush,” she said, although he’d already gone silent. “Hush, we don’t have to, we can’t, I know that.” She began stroking, patting his face, saying, “Spike, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry--”  
  
Knowing itself betrayed, his demon wanted to flash out at her, sweep her out of living fast and hard. He felt the change begin in his eyes: as if they heated, sharpened. Sharpness and suddenness starting to flow from that all through him. But he held himself from it. Because he was fed up so fine, his demon didn’t have the extra leverage of hunger and had to submit. The change receded and even with her hand touching his face, she wouldn’t know, wouldn’t have felt there was still within him anything not altogether humbled and obedient to her.  
  
“Sorry, so sorry,” she still was wailing.  
  
A huge wave of sadness lifted up in Spike and he thought he knew its name. He had no soothing noises to answer that. When at last she stopped apologizing, he said, “I know you tried your best, pet. So what conditions has he set, then, for me to not breathe his air?”  
  
“I tried. I did. But it’s not fighting and I can’t…can’t keep believing that this is right. That we’re right.” Her hand closed into a fist and she pounded the ground just beyond his head. “Can’t, without you there. When it’s just me.”  
  
And yet she’d come. Heard the bike and come running, all barefoot, across the dark grass. That was need, though, not love. He knew that well enough. And likely only love would have let her hold fast, given her a place to stand.  
  
With her fist still hammering down, Spike said softly, “You can hit me, love. I’m what’s making it hard for you. Except for me, it would all be simple again.”  
  
Her fist uncoiled and patted more aimless apologies against the side of his head.  
  
He guessed the Slayer in her also was angry, also felt betrayed. Also was being restrained and deflected from striking at him: guilty of abandonment and of being the proximal cause of her misery, as she was guilty of weakness and irresolution. And the conflicted punishing anger swallowed down, refused, as it nearly always was now because the will to cherish, protect, and forgive was so much stronger, such a steady ache of self-surrender and longing that the fleeting irrationalities had no power and only harmlessly flashed and faded. All layers, complications. Nothing simple anymore.  
  
He kissed her to say he knew that and accepted it. And she kissed him back to say she knew and it didn’t help. That she could not hold fast and yet would not let go. And their hands on one another therefore snatching and desperate, unable to take good hold and be at peace in the contact.  
  
Well, it was all pretty much what he’d expected, after all. Hoped for better but not expected it. So this line was all run out. Have to do that other, then.  
  
Spike got up and extended a hand. Buffy took it and he pulled her up. They turned together back to the bike humming on its side.  
  
**********  
  
Spike ranged along the row of identical doors until the scent told him the right one. He rapped twice sharply and then stood away. Back by the bike, Buffy stood wide-eyed and waiflike in the long T and her bare legs, hair all tumbled by the wind.  
  
In under a minute, the door opened. Maybe the Watcher had heard the bike.  
  
Spike took another retreating step, eyes downcast, hands stuffed safe into pockets, shoulders hunched and tight. “Rupert. Sorry to trouble you again.”  
  
“Spike.”  
  
“Wonder if you might take Buffy home. Don’t want to cause no further trouble. Won’t happen again.”  
  
Silence. Then Giles asked mildly, “Do you want to come in?”  
  
Spike backed another step. “No need. But…I’m gonna work something out. A truce, of a sort. With Angel, if he’ll have it. If it’s OK, I’ll just slide it under your door when it’s done. Then maybe you could pass it along, next chance you have.”  
  
His demon was enraged with the Watcher: for assisting Angel’s advent and for what Giles had yet to do, that Spike had just now asked of him. The _Kill the Messenger_ impulse. Completely irrational and fiercely strong, and Spike with less conviction to withhold himself from it. So he kept himself backed away and controlled the furious demon within him as a hooded falcon that bated and raged.  
  
He flinched, startled, at the Watcher’s hand dropping onto his shoulder. But the hand pursued past the flinch to rest, heavy and quiet, where it had been sent to go. Giles said, “I’m sure this is horribly difficult. For you both. Certainly I’ll help in any way that I can. And I value the confidence you’ve placed in me.”  
  
“Yeah. Thanks.” Spike immediately wheeled and returned to the bike. To Buffy. “You’ll go home with the Watcher. Maybe that will keep Angel within bounds. I’m gonna send him an offer of truce, like. An’ that may take a bit, working out. So don’t you worry if you don’t see anything of me for awhile. I imagine that will be one of his conditions, to consider it at all. I’ll come to you when I can.”  
  
Buffy hugged him. “I’ll wait. And try not to let things get worse in the meantime.”  
  
“Yeah. Right. You go on, now,” Spike said as Giles came out again, shut the unit’s door, and went to stand by his stupid ugly car in the second row of parking slots.  
  
Spike watched them out of sight, then went to Giles’ former place: where Spike had written the letters DAWN on his hand, trying not to lose that too. Determining nobody was alive inside that unit, Spike quickly broke in and wedged the door shut with a wad of tissues. Having shut all the drapes, he turned on the desk lamp and settled there, pulling the sheaf of complementary stationery out of the drawer and finding a pen.  
  
Once he had a cigarette going, he was as ready as he’d ever be to compose what probably was his own death warrant.  
  
The first draft began, _You barbaric lout_ That went into the wastebasket immediately. The next draft contained fifteen synonyms for _idiot_ but was discarded not for that reason but because Spike tried to put in condolences about Darla’s reported newest death, and that got complicated because he’d really hated the bitch by the end and pretty much all along, actually, and the words and phrases looked to him like exactly what they were: hypocritical cant. So he pitched that too.  
  
The third draft began, _Angel, I’m sorry I had you tortured over the Gem of Amarra. If you want something done properly, you have to do it yourself. I should have done it myself but that was always your preferred art form you great bleeding nance_  
  
Since the level of discourse rather went downhill from there, Spike added that draft to the rejects, plowed his fingers through his hair a few more times, reviewed most of the reasons he knew he had to do this, took a fresh sheet of paper, and began again.  
  
_Angel, I hope you recognize this as an impasse. I don’t want to be at war with you. It’s a waste of energies required elsewhere. Since I know you’re not apt to make accommodation, it falls to me_ ~~as usual~~. I mention that I am now ensouled only because some people ascribe some value to it. This news will probably not please you, but it was not you I had in mind in any fashion whilst I did it. If it inclines you to read through this missive to the end, it will have served all my present purpose in informing you.  
  
Probably there is too much between us for anything to be simply said or entirely believed. We have lost any semblance of civility. For my part, I am quit of you and satisfied to be so. Yet that is not entirely true either. I remember the misfortune we had following Gordon’s slaughter at Khartoum and how splendidly you handled that. And so of course I knew this present situation would also be best directed by you and not by me, an opinion in which you appear to concur. If it is offensive to you that I speak of you and of Angelus, that you were to ~~me~~ us at that time, making no distinction, I assure you that no offense is meant. I know little of Angel. It is Angelus that I knew. I assume the skills of the one are the skills of the other. Intention is always a different matter. So we shall never be quit whilst we remember. Which means until this strange unlife ends for us both, whenever that should be. When I remember, you are there. I assume it may be the like for you ~~since Darla since Drusill~~ a  
  
A way exists to resolve such an impasse as this. It was formulated and used among those who, like us, are of the Elder Blood; few in this time remember it. I saw it done once in Russia, where perhaps the old ways held longest. I have been told that the Line of the Tepes, in the Balkans, also had recourse to it. Supplice d’Allégance. The Absolute Submission. I believe you may know of it ~~because it is cruel~~ l but if you do not, no matter, since its form is according to the ~~whim~~ wish of the Master performing the ritual. I believe it is my right to require this of you, my Master and my Sire, however estranged, as the acknowledged and unquestioned Junior of our Line. If you accept my invocation of this rite, I will come to the place that you name and put myself into your hands for whatever may satisfy you of my fealty, that I may serve some purpose in this present matter. I place no conditions, implicit or explicit, upon how the ordeal is to be performed or what the outcome shall be.  
  
I mean nothing here, or very little, beyond what I say. There is no buried cipher to be worked out. I will not willingly be shut out of this and cannot further tolerate the impasse in which we find ourselves, perhaps to the ruin of all else. This is the only solution I have found to end it. ~~Besides, you’ll enjoy it.~~  
  
Rupert Giles, C.O.W., has kindly agreed to carry this message for me in ~~the~~ my expectation that he has earned and won your respect as he has mine, and in the hope that you may therefore grant to him, if not to me, the courtesy of reading it. He knows nothing of the contents or of what I am proposing. Your oral answer to him will suffice. Nothing more need be written. If you accept, inform me where I am to go and I shall be there. You may give any reason you choose for my absence; or I shall give any you direct and none but that. I offer in honor that it may be received in honor.  
  
I submit myself to your will and wait to know it. You may test my obedience in whatever way seems good to you.  
  
Spike turned that draft over and sat staring at the blank reverse side for several hours. Then he turned it face up, reread it, added a few words, a few more strikeouts, and methodically made a fair copy. He signed it  
_Yr Childe,_  
William of Aurelius  
  
Having folded the letter, he slid it into an envelope he then sealed and addressed. Only as he was about to slide it under the door of Giles’ new efficiency did he realize what he’d written was _To Angelus of Aurelius._ For a second, he thought to change it. Then he poked it the rest of the way and rose. No matter.  
  
************  
  
The hillsides east of Sunnydale were good stone with numerous water-cut caves of varying depth and complexity. There’d once been a nest of Hrath’najaur demons who’d preferred the isolation but Spike found no current sign of them. He chose that cave to lair in because it had room to wheel the bike inside. The remaining time before sunrise he spent checking the surrounding area for any sign of habitation since many sorts of demons and other creatures were not constrained by sunlight as vampires were, and he didn’t want any happening on him when he was asleep. Finding nothing amiss, he kicked and spread loose sand over the bike’s treadmarks, then retreated into the deeper dark.  
  
He could still vaguely smell the Hrath’najaurs--not an unpleasant odor, and it gave an illusion of company as cemeteries did. Spike had no fondness for unmodified Nature and little for solitude. The Hrath’najaurs’ sleeping area was deep clean sand--they were burrowers--and Spike settled there. For a while, arms behind his head, he thought about what he’d need to do, in what order, when he woke. A little after sunrise, he slept and eventually woke to a redder light, the last of the sunset, blessedly with no memory of dreaming.  
  
It might have been good to have some vision past what was ahead. But he hadn’t expected assurances.  
  
Toward the rear of the main cavern, there was a spring of fresh water gathered still and cool in a catchpool. Spike drank from cupped palms, then ducked his head a couple of times and sat back on his heels. The water soaking into his shirt felt good. So he pulled off the shirt and had a soapless wash with it. Seeing that twilight had fallen, he returned to the bike, pulling the wet shirt back on. He wheeled the bike out, swung on, and started slow down the crooked ground toward the nearest road. Only when he’d reached it did he notice that the assorted bangs and bumps of the descent hadn’t bothered his ribs. That much less clutter to complicate his thinking and doing.  
  
Coming in, he’d taken note of a convenience store likely to have a phone. Returning there, he found his guess confirmed and poked in coins and dialed the motel’s number he’d written on his hand last night. Getting an answer, he asked for Giles, who answered on the second ring.  
  
“Giles here.”  
  
“Me, Rupert. Any word?”  
  
“Yes. And yes. Spike? Is there anything else I might do? Spike? Are you--?”  
  
“Keep the whole bloody thing from coming apart, I s’pose. Assuming anybody can do that…. No, nothing more I know. Obliged to you, Watcher. Goodbye.”  
  
So Angel had agreed. Spike hadn’t seriously doubted he would. His childe served up on a plate to play with as he pleased and as long as he pleased, now why would Angel say no to that?  
  
So proceed to the next thing, then. Mounting the bike, Spike went fast into town, checking the most likely places as he came to them. The Bronze. The dying theater (the mall multiplex was drawing too much custom) and streetside shops, still open at this hour, mostly college children abroad. Then Willy’s, a quick look inside finding Huey bussing tables. Spike caught his eye and went back outside, waiting until Huey joined him.  
  
“How was the poker?”  
  
“Decent. Betting was better, though. A decent stake. You fight pretty, Spike. Bet Willy would take you back if you ate some crow.”  
  
“Well. Other things to do. An’ I never did like crow…. Gonna be away awhile. Could I send Michael to you? Look after him, whatever he needs? I’ll leave the bike with him. Could sell it, that’d be enough for his keep for awhile. He’s not fit to be on his own yet. You know.”  
  
“No. He’s not. And I can’t do for him, Spike. He’s not gonna mind me.”  
  
Spike shrugged. “Keep him from getting hurt too bad, then. Can’t take him with, that’s not an option.”  
  
“He’s not my get, Spike. I won’t do him no harm, but past that, I can’t say. Can’t just swap a fledge around like that, minion or not. You know better.” Huey’s long Scandinavian face was serious. Not hostile. Not really anything.  
  
“Yeah. I s’pose. See you, then.” Spike turned back to the bike and headed to the last place he knew to look: the house on Livingston. Although he could tell Michael had laired there through the day, he was gone. Spike stood awhile in the yard. Coming up with a possibility he didn’t like, he started walking, not wanting the bike’s noise to announce him.  
  
Approaching Casa Spike, on Brown, he felt the awareness of a whole lot of suitable prey inside, that was the SITs. And through that, not quite lost in it, the low-level prickly awareness of another predator in the vicinity. Spike went on slowly, by feel rather than by sight, making no attempt to conceal himself. When he was pretty sure he was close, he stopped. “Come here, Michael.”  
  
Out from behind some trash cans at the side of a garage, Mike straightened and came, sullen and resentful. No good answers and no good time for talk. Spike just turned and walked back to Casa Spike, Mike trailing along behind.  
  
At the head of the walk, Spike stopped. “Michael, go ring the bell. Ask ‘Manda and Kim to come out here. Then come back.”  
  
When Mike and the two SITs came, Spike sat down on his heels, and the SITs did the same. Mike stood glowering and unhappy.  
  
“’Manda,” Spike said, “you know I been looking after Michael, here. Can’t do that now. And I know you can’t be responsible for him. But look after him how you can, all right? Nobody never asks him inside. Never. And nobody never lets him feed from them. And Michael, they’re still mine, even when I’m not here to say so, all right?” Spike looked up but Mike refused to meet his eyes. “Michael, you look at me when I’m talking to you.” Obeying, Mike went yellow-eyed and vamp-faced. Spike said anyway, “That’s fine. Michael, you trust these children. All of ‘em. You know them all. They won’t do you no harm. You need something, you can ask them. And Bit. Something you don’t know, you ask Dawn. ‘Manda or Kim, here, they’ll go fetch her if there’s need. And tell her what I said. Whatever Dawn says, you do, she won’t tell you wrong. She knows, the most of anyone, how it is for us. You still lair back on Livingston. But you don’t hunt anyplace nearby, right? Just like I told you, just like before. I know you’re mad at me, Michael. I thought we’d have longer. ‘S’not my choice, to leave you.” Another thought occurred, and Spike added, “Don’t you hunt me, neither. It doesn’t concern you. You stay clear or you’d be hurt. You hear me?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Michael, my bike is back at the other place. It’s yours. Use it or sell it, whatever you please.”  
  
“Don’t want your bike.”  
  
The lad was at the thin, vibrating edge of control. But it wouldn’t do for Spike to let on he knew that.  
  
“It’s yours, all the same. Now you gonna do what I told you, Michael?”  
  
“Maybe. What d’you care, if you’re not gonna be here?” Mike challenged.  
  
“Michael, I want to provide for you. Be easier not to: can you see that? Be easier just to walk off, let you all go your ways. But you’re a good lad an’ I don’t want to do you that way. And these children, they been kind and kept faith with me, and I know they’d look after you without me even asking. So I believe this can be, and no one hurt, and--”  
  
Mike swung at him. Spike saw it coming and leaned away in lots of time, then stood fast, balanced right, the children ducking and quickly getting clear.  
  
“Spike, don’t,” said Amanda sharply. “We’ll cope. Truly. Don’t.”  
  
It wasn’t right. A disobedient minion was not to be tolerated. Let alone one who’d raise a hand against a master.  
  
Not looking anywhere except at yellow-eyed Mike, Spike said, “If he don’t mind me, he won’t mind anybody. You’d have to do him, soon or late.”  
  
“Then we will. If we have to. But not you. Not now. Leave him alone, Spike. Please.”  
  
Spike told Mike, “Now you hear, how they speak up for you? You hear that? You know what’s due, Michael.”  
  
Vamp-face flowed and was gone as Mike sank to his knees. “Dust me then, what do I care.”  
  
“I would, except they claimed charge over you. And I’m gonna allow that. So you submit to them, Michael. And you never, ever cross them or they’ll do you, and you know they can. Just like I could. Now you do it, Michael. Right this minute.”  
  
“Don’t want you to leave me,” Mike exclaimed, finally starting to cry.  
  
“Well, that’s not up to you, is it? Nor me, but there’s no help for it. You give them your submission, Michael, and be a help to them like you been to me. ‘S’not the best, but there’s nothing else. No other way. _Michael!_ ”  
  
“All right. I submit.”  
  
“We accept your submission, Michael,” said Amanda, coming into Spike’s line of sight. And Spike was proud of her because she’d listened, at the hospital, in spite of all else that’d been there. She knew the proper words. “Take your life from our hands. We’ll keep you and look after you and no harm coming to anyone from it.” Approaching Mike, Amanda had her taser in her hand, and she moved light and careful, but once she’d gone down on her heels by the lad, likely she couldn’t have stopped him if he’d decided to turn and take her. But this time, at least, that didn’t happen, and Mike allowed the tall, thin, homely girl who would barely have made a whole meal to clasp him around the shoulders and hold him so.  
  
So Spike obeyed the glance she flashed him, to be gone with no more fuss about it. Spike headed off, as quick and quiet as he could, through the yard and through the hedge. That was Michael seen to, anyway. And they might find a way to be, Mike and the SITs, and maybe better than Spike for all that no human he’d ever heard of had asked for or accepted submission from a vampire. Nor any vamp who’d offered it, neither. None of them knew the rules. Which maybe was for the best, since they therefore had no expectations and would make it up as they went. Like he and Buffy had. There were no rules for that neither. And it worked well enough, or had….  
  
Put things together whatever way they fit, whatever way he could. Try to make them come to sense, even if it was no sense anybody else would confirm or agree to. Tradition was a steadying thing: hard to hold against and a support perilous to discard. Without it, everything had to be thought out and decided, minute to minute, and nobody could live like that forever. Some things had to be understood, simple, or the complexities and uncertainties would multiply into an infinite fishline backlash tangle you’d finally have to cut through to free yourself of it. And then the hook, last of all.  
  
Standing quiet under the maple tree, Spike thought that he’d cut through all the line and arrived at the hook end of things. All the complexities were set aside and no more choices to be made.  
  
After awhile Angel came out to him and they faced each other. Spike almost asked what was required of him, where he was to go, but didn’t, realizing there was no need. Angel would specify. So Spike just waited. Angel turned with an abrupt summoning gesture. Spike followed along and got in on the passenger side when Angel slid in behind the wheel of his big convertible, that Spike sometimes had derisively thought of as the Angelmobile. But that didn’t signify anymore. Spike leaned back and shut his eyes.  
  
When the car stopped, Spike got out and again followed, entering one of the anonymous, characterless abandoned houses. This one had been completely cleaned out to the bare walls. Angel led him through to what was probably the living room. A largeish room, anyway. That was good because Spike had never liked small enclosed spaces since his rising, finding himself trapped in a cheap deal coffin. Nothing he couldn’t control, but at least it seemed no immediate part of the ordeal.  
  
Again they stood and faced one another.  
  
Angelus would have gloated and insulted him. Called him _boy_ , if not worse. Told him how stupid he’d been to enter into such an open-ended agreement, one that few, historically, had ever survived. Which wasn’t meant to be survived. Which was, in fact, a form of tradition-sanctioned murder from its earliest beginnings: instituted as a method of dealing with intractable, ambitious juniors and subordinates.  
  
Angel did not allow himself gloating or insults. He said only, flatly, “Declare.”  
  
So he did know the forms. That should make things simpler.  
  
Spike replied, “I, William of Aurelius, do submit myself to the Supplice d’Allégance, my Master and Sire, as test and proof of my fealty.”  
  
“I accept your submission. Your life is in my hand, to determine whether you be my true and obedient childe, to keep fealty against all hardship and temptation, even in extremis.” Angel scratched an eyebrow, then went on less formally, “All right, Will. Would you have it slow or fast?”  
  
“Fast.”  
  
“Then my command is _stand_.”  
  
Spike found and took a steady stance. He didn’t flinch or move when Angel went to vamp face and the wide jaws closed at the junction of Spike’s neck and shoulder. The dizziness wasn’t too bad at first. Only after Angel began spitting the blood aside onto the floor did the swimming in Spike’s head become severe. Blinking as he was drained, Spike concentrated on his stance. If the dark room seemed to tilt and start spinning slowly counterclockwise, at least he still knew how he stood. Passing out wouldn’t count as refusal. Only refusal counted as refusal.  
  
Easier to start drained than wait to slowly become so. Quicker, then, to the point of involuntary refusal. It was after that, that the really bad part would begin.


	17. Section 4: Into the Dark — Polling

The first night of Angel’s arrival, Buffy practically dragged Anya aside after the meeting while the others were gathering in the hall preparatory to leaving. Anya looked from Buffy’s face to Buffy’s gripping hands and back to Buffy’s face again, bright and birdlike and curious, like Jeff Bridges in _Starman_ but not so winsome. Just birdlike and alien, then. Buffy asked her, “Really, Anya. What do you think? About Spike and, and me?”  
  
Anya was the good one to ask first, Buffy thought, because Buffy figured Anya knew him the best, since they were both part-demon. And since Anya’d had conspicuous covertly televised sex with him on the big table in the Magic Box. Must mean you knew somebody pretty well to do that, right? And this was horrible. Embarrassing and utterly horrible. Buffy felt like hiding and never coming out again.  
  
“Well, I have a good many thoughts about you,” Anya responded judiciously, “and a good many about Spike. We’d be here several days if I were to tell you all of them. People don’t usually ask me questions that open-ended because I tend to be literal. You may have noticed. So I sometimes get the impression that I offer considerable information beyond what they’d initially expected. Would you care to narrow that question down?”  
  
Buffy was going to strangle her and _then_ curl up and die. “Spike and me. Together. As a couple.” Oh, she was going to hell for that, certain sure. She’d said _together_. She’d said _couple_ , which was another way of saying _sex_ when it was a verb, and Spike was practically all verb, had to pry the nouns out of him by brute force.  
  
“Again, that’s a pretty broad topic. And why wasn’t Spike here tonight, by the way? It’s not like him to forget. He doesn’t usually say much of anything, but putting in an appearance has to count for something, for being responsible.”  
  
“He’s not here,” Buffy gritted, “because he and Angel were at each other’s throats from the second Angel set foot inside the door. Round one was inconclusive. More or less a draw--some damage on both sides. Round two is likely to be quite a bit more messy. And end in dust. So I guess he ran, got out, rather than face that. Force that, I mean.” _(And abandoned me, the rat! Abandoned me to face it all alone! He knows I’m lousy at that, I hate that! And he still ran!)_ “OK, no to the vagueness here. Spike and me: are we right? Or are we both kidding ourselves and this is never gonna work, it’s really just a mutual insanity, it’s just the really great sex and how come I always end up with the vampires? Why is that?” Buffy yanked at her hair fretfully.  
  
“The really great sex part, I’ll take on faith,” Anya responded, giving the matter serious thought. “Because he’s skilled, no question: he might have trained as a sex worker except there was no such profession, and therefore no training for it, until very recently, except for the court of Catherine the Great, which was another thing entirely. And you’ve nearly ruined him for that, I must tell you, Buffy. The great thing about vamps in bed, beyond the nearly non-existent refractory time, of course, is that they’re almost impossible to distract. They really give it their all. Drunk and miserable and distracted, they’re pretty pointless, but of course you go on, you don’t want to hurt their tiny feelings or their tiny anything else. Now, Xander--”  
  
“Thanks, Anya. I appreciate your frankness,” Buffy interjected hastily before Anya could launch into (Gak!) Xander’s deficiencies in bed or anywhere else. Buffy did _so_ not want to know!  
  
“Well, it’s about time someone did,” Anya replied tartly, patting her hair, which was champagne blonde at the moment.  
  
Xander was the next target for horrible, embarrassing interrogation but in a way, Xander was safe. Xander had hated Spike from the first moment, when Angel had offered him to Spike as a snack (all a deception, of course, and it hadn’t worked), and had never seen any reason to change his opinion since although as far as Buffy knew, Xander had never seriously attempted to stake Spike, which was more than could be said for her.  
  
“Xander, c’mere.” Buffy drew him away from a conversation with Angel, whom Xander also loathed, into the small alcove between the basement door and the back of the upstairs staircase. “Look, just tell me: Spike and, and I, we’ve been a public item for awhile now. What do you think of it? Really?” Buffy looked him anxiously in the eyes.  
  
“I think your getting it on with Charles Manson would be a considerable improvement. Ted Bundy. And this is the blank where you fill in the lucky mass murderer of your choice. Are you insane, Buffy? No, the question is _how_ insane are you? The idea of shaking the guy’s hand gives me goosebumps and a world of ick. The idea of--”  
  
“Thanks, Xander. I get the idea.” Buffy propelled him back down the hall in the manner of a shopping cart. When he was on the porch, Buffy said firmly, “Good night, Xander.”  
  
She turned and Angel was there, looking down at her somberly. Angel asked, “Is this a poll? Can anybody vote? Can we mark _None of the above?_ Are you the prize in life’s box of Crackerjacks and Spike just got lucky, stuck in his nasty little fingers and there you were?”  
  
“You don’t do sarcasm well,” Buffy shot back and _why_ did she have to always be looking so way up at him? Spike was taller than she was and he didn’t make her look up that way, always hunkering small on the floor, or sprawled low in a chair, or tilting his head pretending to be smaller than he was and why couldn’t Angel do good things like that? Why did he have to make such a point of _looming?_ “That’s Angelus’ shtick and he’s better at it.”  
  
“Buffy, why ask when you already know? Is a quick vote of confidence from his fifteen closest friends--oh, sorry, I forgot: he doesn’t have any friends--going to change that slaughterous foul-mouthed twerp into something fit for human society? Much less yours?”  
  
“He does too. Have friends. He’s changed. He has a soul. Too. And it wasn’t forced on him, either. Which is more than some of us can claim.”  
  
Angel looked thunderous and perplexed. Then perplexed went away. “He must have stolen it. It certainly hasn’t noticeably cramped his style, after all. And that’s what souls are supposed to do, Buffy: make him _sorry_ for being a backstabbing ungrateful bastard I should have squeezed into dust a century ago. You don’t even claim to love him. So why bother trying to defend him? Habit? If he’s been useful, I’m more useful. And I’ll take care of you, not exploit you. Not corrupt you…any more than I already have. And if I knew how to be any more sorry about that, I would be. Because I know Spike would never have been able to get his claws into you, or anything else, except for me. Making you think that vamps were OK. Vamps are not OK, Buffy. We’re demons and we deserve to be dead.” Angel gave her Sincere, Loving Look #22, that had always melted her and still did, dammit, continuing, “As long as I’m among the semi-living, I’ll make it up to you however I can. Now leave it. He’s not worth another minute of my time or your thought. And I’m not going to hear any more.”  
  
After he’d passed her, Buffy muttered rebelliously, “The Emperor has spoken.”  
  
“I heard that,” Angel said over his shoulder, waving a cautionary finger, descending the front steps.  
  
He was staying at a hotel downtown. No room for him at Casa Summers, even if all the SITs were to be bundled together over at Casa Spike. And besides, it wasn’t to be thought of that Angel would stay under the same roof as her, the attraction of his undead charms and huge shoulders might have been too much for them both to resist and presto-change-o, you got Mr. Compleat Ugly Angelus who far outdid anything, even unproven and hypothetical, Spike had ever managed by way of gleeful evil, and the no-friends he attributed to Spike went double, triple, quadruple when it came to Angelus. Absolutely _nobody_ liked Angel’s worse half--not even Angel. So no question of his staying here.  
  
And then, preparing for bed and for reading Dawn the riot act for letting herself get dragged off to a bar, for God’s sake, by the non-comedy team of Spike and Mike, and probably even having the Mystical Green Energy Thing _cojones_ to actually have _fun_ when life had become utterly unbearable for big-sis-who-hadn’t-been-asked-to-escape-to-said-bar, hearing the bike, yanking on the sleepshirt and running, after a bit of a chaste tumble and mutual misery and being delivered, still all chaste and miserable, for Giles to deliver home as if she were a ten-year-old runaway, self-consciously yanking the hem of the sleepshirt over her knees for the fifteenth time, Buffy still managed to scrape up a small puddle of courage to ask, “Giles, you’re nearly always civil to him now. So what do you really think? About Spike and me? Because Angel’s being an utter brute about it and Spike won’t back me up, he just runs, and I’m all alone here, Giles. And it’s so awful….”  
  
Without looking away from the road, Giles passed her a handkerchief. She was too ashamed to get snot in it so she just used it to dab at her eyes and took big sniffs.  
  
Giles said abruptly, “Spike believes that you don’t love him. Would you consider that an accurate assessment?”  
  
So Giles wasn’t gonna be on her side either. Might in fact even be inclined to side with Spike, the traitor! And Rupert Giles doing the male solidarity thing with _Spike_ was absolutely beyond belief, beyond all the odds of oddness.  
  
Buffy wiped her eyes again wearily. “It’s hard for much romance to bloom when I’m always taking all this goddam criticism for boinking the evil undead. Past and present. Nobody backs me up, Giles. Nobody says, ‘Buffy, go for it, be happy, and who cares if he has a pulse.’ It’s hard getting up in the morning or wanting to. But Spike. He helps. He tries so goddam hard and nobody, absolutely nobody, gives him any credit for it. He’s been a real partner to me, Giles, and I can’t face what’s coming, I can’t even face _now_ , without him. So is that love? You tell me.”  
  
“It sounds, at most, like your loving his loving you. And that’s a very poor substitute, Buffy, for the actual thing. Of late and since the soul, I’ve developed quite a lot of respect for Spike. Given his handicaps, he’s done at least as much as Angel, the acknowledged Champion of the Powers That Be, has actually accomplished. At times, perhaps, the flesh is weak, but the spirit certainly is willing; and the same could be said of me, or of any of us. I know if I were in Spike’s position, I would have despaired at the way you blow hot, cold, and icy, never giving the same set of signals for a whole hour at a time. I would have simply given up, Buffy. And I wouldn’t blame him if he did. He’s been trying to accomplish something quite independent of you. He’s been trying, quite creatively, to come up with some effective opposition to the First. Which is supposed to be your mission. Not his. But he’s committed himself to it…again, apart from his commitment to you. I think at this juncture I will be betraying no confidences in telling you that the idea of summoning Angel--”  
  
“--was his. Yeah. He told me.”  
  
“And weren’t you at all surprised by that? Knowing them long-time antagonists, not even considering their history together, which is, to put it mildly, remarkably savage and perverted?”  
  
“Didn’t think about it all that much,” Buffy admitted. “He was being dumb, and that was just one more dumb thing in the middle of all the other dumb things. How in the world did he talk you into that? Into pretending his idea was yours?”  
  
“By painful frankness, when he clearly would be the loser by it if the plan proved successful. He’s a wretchedly bad liar. But he is also impossible to doubt when he speaks the truth, because he spares himself not at all. Which you have a tendency to do, Buffy. ‘Truth cannot be said so as to be understood, and not be believed.’”  
  
“That’s poetry,” Buffy accused.  
  
“So it is. Blake. I gather we share a fondness for Blake, Spike and I--one of the true philosophical revolutionaries. As close as I am ever apt to come to understanding chaos in the service of order. Destruction as part of the Natural cycle. Breaking it all down so it can all be built up a different way, and perhaps a better.”  
  
“So you don’t figure he’s evil anymore?” Buffy asked hopefully.  
  
“I now disqualify myself from judging him at all. He’s beyond my ken. But whatever his means, I believe his ends to be good; so I will continue to offer him assistance in whatever way he requests or is willing to accept. Unless, of course, he loses his temper and kills me, which is always a lively possibility and makes dealing with him so refreshing.”  
  
In the dash lights, Giles’ face wore one of his pursy little smiles. Then he glanced at her, actually taking his eyes off the road for a whole second.  
  
“I know that love does not come on command, Buffy. And I believe that if Spike had no further hope of your returning his love, it would break him. He’s staked absolutely everything on it. So I cannot, in good conscience, tell you to send him away, even though that might be more merciful in the end. All I can say is that if you ever truly know you cannot love him, just as he is and is becoming, without conditions or restrictions, don’t ever say that you can or that you do. That would be the most wicked, cruel, and unforgivable lie I can imagine.”  
  
“Wicked.”  
  
“Yes, wicked. Evil from intended good is more pernicious than evil intended for its own sake. You must decide this for yourself, Buffy. And then stand by it, no matter who disapproves or disagrees. Even if the one disagreeing is I. This much I will say: that I don’t think that the fact Spike is a vampire, and you are the Slayer, has the least significance anymore, except as it may matter to you, and to him. You are never going to make a man of him. And he is never going to make a vampire of you. Your differences--your opposition, even--is part of what brought and now holds you together. You and he must come to terms with those differences in their full measure. But you are not purely Good, Buffy, and I mean that as no criticism, only the truth. And Spike is by no means purely Evil, if indeed he ever was. He is an individual who loves passionately and tries desperately and with very little hope. And I hope that would always earn my respect, no matter who or what the person was.”  
  
“Person,” Buffy repeated.  
  
“Yes, person. I have been considering your Boogey Man Credo idea in preparation to writing my piece, that you required of us all…what now seems a very long time ago. And that far, at least, I have come in agreement with your basic thesis. Vampires--mature vampires, at least--are individuals. Are people, in any conceivable interpretation of the word. Spike and Angel are persons, beyond question, quite independent of their ensoulment. And they hate one another from having been too close for too long. Such a long life surely has as many drawbacks as advantages…. And I don’t like to think what may be required for Spike to establish a truce, much less a true peace, between them. Because vampires have little interest in negotiations or concessions. Vampires, each and always, are concerned with power. With force and domination. And I don’t believe there is a moderate bone in any of them.”  
  
“So you think Angel is gonna hurt Spike?”  
  
“Oh, I’m quite certain of that. The only question is how much and to what purpose. And that, I should very much like to know.”  
  
“Don’t ask him. Angel. Please. He’s said his condition for not dusting Spike is that we all shut up about him and pretend he doesn’t exist.”  
  
“Very well. There are other avenues. And Angel’s remarks concerning the Hellmouth tonight represent really fresh thinking. He’s right: we’ve been entirely reactive and therefore very nearly helpless: dealing only with the effects, not the cause. Leaving the initiative wholly with the First. Spike’s judgment is validated, pending the result. Angel is the best leader, and one uniquely placed to be effective in our present circumstances, that we could have been fortunate enough to recruit. It’s a good thing, Buffy, that Angel is here. Though I’m sure it will only become more difficult for us all, day by day. And now you’re home.”  
  
Buffy turned her head and sure enough, it was: same old Casa Summers. Giles popped the automatic lock and Buffy uncurled her legs from under her to get out. Standing holding the top of the open door, Buffy said, “Thanks for the ride, Giles. And the talk. And this is so _not_ the crappy car that Spike and Dawn say it is. It’s actually kind of cute.”  
  
“Cute. Yes, how nice. Well, you’re welcome, Buffy. And if I can be of any further help, please don’t hesitate to call upon me. And when you feel so terribly alone, surrounded by nothing but disapproval and opposition, I suggest that you talk to Dawn. She’s surely a powerful and admitted partisan of Spike’s. And if her remarkable claim is at all to believed, she has…ah, friends in high places beyond anybody’s ken, including mine.”  
  
“Dawn? As in, Dawn that I’m gonna ground for a month for being out past midnight?”  
  
“Even so,” Giles said, and sighed. “Surely this is an apocalypse. Too many contending powers have converged for it to be anything else. Ask Dawn. Your present memory of her is not all that there is, Buffy. And you loved her, once.”  
  
“I love her now, but she’s still gonna get grounded!”  
  
“Some loves are so easy to know and say. It’s a pity most are more difficult. I would very much like to have a long talk with Dawn myself. Perhaps that’s what I should do. In any case, she’s your sister as well as Spike’s partisan, and is as totally immoderate as any of the rest of you, so you should find her company comparatively soothing. Good night, Buffy.”  
  
“G’night, Giles.” Buffy shut the door and backed away from the curb, and Giles’ car pulled away.  
  
Trudging upstairs, Buffy found both Willow (her next target for polling) and Dawn asleep, naturally in separate rooms, and was so weary herself that she didn’t wake them…or the assorted SITs sharing their beds, some more innocently than others. Kennedy and Willow, specifically, on the not-innocent side. Not Dawn, JoAnne, Vi, Chloe, Cho-Anh, and at least one pink large teddy bear. Hadn’t meant that at all, rewind, reset, Take Two.  
  
Damn: listening to Giles for any length of time really did whack to the brain.  
  
So Buffy dragged along to her own room and her own pitifully solitary Spikeless bed, flopped face-down on the pillow, and was asleep within minutes.  
  
**********  
  
With Angel running the show, things pretty much ground to a halt during the day except for Buffy’s job, of course, and who really cared about that. Spike had planned it much better, Dawn thought: taking his sleep break from noon to about sundown, so the morning was filled--for the SITs, at least--with weapons drill and individual training. So far, Angel hadn’t shown up at all during the daytime (complicated, but not impossible, for a vamp), and just for an hour or two at night, conferring with the Scoobys and Giles.  
  
Which was fine with Dawn. Angel’s good idea about the Hellmouth and involving some magical talisman or other that Anya was helping Willow locate, per Anya, didn’t square him at all in Dawn’s estimation. Buffy was whiny and wilted and miserable, and nobody had seen or heard from Spike in two days. Dawn was certain something underhanded that she ought to know about was afoot, and Angel had something to do with it. Fine: Spike had said, You bring in a workman, you get out of his way and let him work. But that didn’t mean Spike should give away his fucking bike, that he loved almost as much as the old DeSoto, full of dings, cigarette butts, and character (according to Spike). It didn’t mean giving poor Michael away, or as much as, according to what Amanda had told her, and the SITs knowing about as much about taking proper charge of a vamp as a pig did about Pythagoras.  
  
That wasn’t what you did when you figured to take off for a day or two. That was what you did when you figured you might get seriously dead. It was a wonder he hadn’t tried to give Dawn away, but maybe he’d figured he didn’t have to since she was Buffy’s sister and that was pretty much as good as being given away, right there.  
  
The teeny piece of Spike’s soul that Dawn had co-opted, quite legally and by permission, told her plainly that Spike hadn’t dusted, at least was extant someplace. But Angel’s prohibition was no way enough to keep Spike away, any more than it’d kept the Flying Finnegans act from departing on the bike, three nights back. And it was more than plain that Buffy hadn’t seen him since.  
  
If Spike didn’t come, check in with Dawn somehow, even a phone call--Spike was a modern vamp, knew about tasers and phones and microwaves and everything--it wasn’t because he didn’t want to. It was because he couldn’t. Regardless of anybody else’s claim, he was _hers:_ he’d said so. And nobody restrained or injured Dawn’s rightful property with impunity. Besides, Dawn was scared, but that was her own business.  
  
Since Angel wasn’t anyplace around, or Buffy either, Dawn figured her being grounded only meant she wasn’t allowed to go out to a movie or the mall or anything. It didn’t mean she couldn’t go visit Casa Spike first thing in the morning, the way she always did.  
  
She found a war council already in progress, out in the yard. Kim presided, which meant they were _really_ serious because Kim would do things Amanda never would. If they chose Sue, who was really ruthless and cold-blooded, who was the chief of the no-bra brigade, and who maybe was just a little _too_ interested in vamps, as war leader, that would be the sign that things had really come unglued.  
  
Kim stopped whatever she was saying to wave Dawn to a place next to her. The SITs always did the circle thing, like Spike had taught them, instead of the teacher-class arrangement, the one and then the many. So the circle just inched a little apart to leave Dawn room.  
  
As Dawn plunked down, Kim asked, “What’s the news from Casa Summers?”  
  
“No word. No news,” Dawn said glumly.  
  
“Well, we got this great idea. Tonight Angel’s supposed to review the troops, OK? Because I guess the tasers came in, Spike said they were due about now. One for everybody. So make a big thing of delivering them, and we do a couple drills, OK? All rah rah and fighty? So we’re gonna dog it. Trip over our feet, handle the weapons all girly and eek, is it gonna _cut_ me? Maybe taser a volunteer accidentally-on-purpose. Show Rona some blood, so she can faint. She does _real_ faints, no faking! And make us look like the biggest pack of sissy losers on the planet.”  
  
Rona piped up, “I don’t want anybody but Spike sending me against no Turok-han. They’d waste our asses big time.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kim continued enthusiastically, “and do formations of three, nobody in their right mind does formations of three, everybody bumping into each other--”  
  
Dawn broke in coldly, “That is absolutely the worst fucking idea I’ve heard since New Coke. You know what you’ll do, if you do that? Make Spike look bad! Make Angel think Spike’s an utter incompetent, and you’re a bunch of noodles!”  
  
“Now, that’s harsh, Dawn,” said Rona.  
  
“I don’t care if it’s fucking _severe_ , Rona. You make Spike look like a jerk and I’ll never speak to any of you again, so long as I live.”  
  
“Yeah, and that’s apt to be a whole lot longer than any of _us_ live,” chimed in JoAnne sourly. “Do you think this Angel vamp, or whatever he is, is gonna look out for us like Spike always did? He hasn’t even come to meet us, say Hi, how are all you fine lookin’ maybe-Slayer chicks today?”  
  
“I’ve seen him,” Kennedy said in her usual flat way, not looking at anybody. “I think he’s bad news. Willow seems to put up with him well enough, though. Old Scooby tie or something. Slayer’s boyfriend from way back.”  
  
Rona said, “Yeah, Slayer says _come_ to Mr. Exaljente Generalissimo Grande, we ain’t gonna get to say _go_.”  
  
“You’re forgetting,” Dawn said. “It was Spike who said _come_ And the fact that I think something’s gone off about that doesn’t change that for all I know, Angel’s doing just about what Spike expected him to do. Wanted him to do. After all, I figure you get to know somebody pretty well in a hundred plus years. So I’m not about to start second-guessing Spike until I know more about it. And that’s what we need: to know more about it. We have to find Spike. Check with him before we do anything drastic. I can take the bus. Check the demon bars. See if he’s been around, and how long ago. There’s non-us people around in the daytime, just not vamps. And speaking of vamps: how scary has Michael gotten at this point?”  
  
“He’s not scary, he’s cute,” piped up Sue, with a she-wolf’s grin.  
  
Dawn groaned loudly, considering that major bad news. And Amanda told Sue, “Keep your chewed-to-the-quick claws off the baby vamp. Unless you intend to become lunchments. In that case, go ahead. Anything else, though, is absolutely off limits. We have enough trouble with Sulky Slayer without that. And from what I hear, E.G.G. Angel would definitely not be amused if you got your throat bitten out or anything else permanently broken, if you catch my drift. We’d have to disappear you. Say something got at you on patrol. Because Spike will definitely not be pleased at all if you get his baby vamp hurt or blamed for…anything of that nature,” Amanda finished prissily.  
  
“And who made you the boss of me?” Sue demanded, rising and glaring at Amanda.  
  
“I made me the boss of you, and in one more minute, I’m gonna demand submission. And I think everybody will back me up on it, too. And you really won’t like what we’ll do to you if you’re submitted, Sue. You’re not a baby vamp, you’re a bitch, and we’ll treat you like one and make you learn better. All right, as of now, you’re off the roster.”  
  
Suzanne sat down real fast. “You don’t have to get all shirty about it, ‘Manda. I didn’t mean anything by it. I said he’s cute, and he is. Puppy dog eyes--”  
  
“He’s probably a gazillion years old, it’s probably about his thirtieth fledgehood or whatever the damn word is, and cute boys with or without fangs is not what the mission is about, Sue! And having heard word one, I do _not_ want to hear word two about puppy dog eyes. He wasn’t given to us as a chew-toy, all right?”  
  
_Or a fuckbot_ , Dawn thought but didn’t say, not wanting to take on the chore of explaining the now decommissioned Buffybot to them. Not one of Spike’s more shining hours anyway.  
  
Instead, she held up her arm and said, “Here.” And they all attended. “Topic drift. Topic is finding Spike. I changed my mind. Sue can check out the demon bars. Any problem with that, Sue?”  
  
“None whatever,” said Sue, grinning and inspecting the nails she’d been accused of biting.  
  
“What I want to do,” Dawn continued, “is talk to Michael. He should be asleep now and therefore findable. Not too many--don’t want to make him nervous. Vamps have been known to _do_ things when they’re nervous. ‘Manda, choose a deputation. Maybe three.”  
  
Quietly, Amanda inquired, “Who made you the boss of us?”  
  
“Spike did. Not in so many words, but he did. Because nobody cares as much about Spike as I do, and because he’s _mine_ , and Mike will confirm that he said so, if you’re in any doubt. And because while you all were coming up with dumb schemes to make yourselves look like the queen Dorks of Dorkland, I was thinking that Michael is our best and maybe our only way to locate Spike and find out what’s happened to him. Does that satisfy you, ‘Manda? Are you happy with that?”  
  
It wasn’t strictly true, there was another way to locate Spike, but Dawn wanted to keep that in reserve and use it only as confirmation, because that would mean going public to the adults. Specifically, to Willow. Anyway, Dawn had said “maybe.”  
  
“Happy enough,” Amanda said, and shrugged. “OK, team is me, Kim, and Rona. Mark is Casa Minion. Casa Michael, I guess it should be. Everybody else on taser drill. If we’re gonna put on a decent show tonight, we need more practice. Vi, you call the drill.”  
  
Heading toward Casa Michael, Amanda remarked to Dawn, “Well, you certainly have the Not-Backing-Off drill down pat.”  
  
“I learned from the best,” Dawn agreed smugly.  
  
**********  
  
Coming up with a key, Amanda explained, “We keep it locked in the daytime. It wouldn’t 100% keep something non-us from coming at him, but it would at least give him warning.”  
  
When the door opened, the first thing Dawn saw was the bike--not on its kickstand but leaned rather forlornly against the side of a staircase. They all got inside and Amanda shut the door to keep the bright out.  
  
Amanda remarked, “I don’t know where he lairs. He has the whole house to himself, after all.”  
  
Dawn called, “Michael, I’d like to talk to you. It’s Dawn.”  
  
“Hi, Dawn.”  
  
Dawn jumped and turned, and there he was, sitting on the lowest landing of the stairs, about six feet away. Well within striking distance. His eyes shone faintly in the shut-door gloom.  
  
As the SITs backed off to a more appropriate distance, Dawn went closer and patted the bike’s rear fender, drawing attention to that hand because the other had gone into her pocket, onto her taser. “I’m worried about Spike, Michael. Nobody’s heard from him since he left, the other night. But first, how are you? Have the SITs been treating you all right?”  
  
“Nothing to complain of. Why’d he leave us, Dawn? Didn’t we do right?”  
  
Suddenly all Dawn could think of was how devastating it’d been when Hank Summers left. Michael’s “us” somehow connected to that. “No, Michael. I’m sure it wasn’t our fault.”  
  
Mike’s eerie, soft, almost sourceless voice responded, “I went for him. I did. Thought he’d do me, right there. Would have made sense that way. This don’t make any sense, Dawn.”  
  
“That’s because we don’t know. Why he went. And I think it’s bad, Michael, or he would have told us. And we’re kind of stuck here. We can’t tag along behind Angel, see where he goes. He’d know. But you’re a vamp. And he wouldn’t notice you. Well, he might, but he wouldn’t make anything of noticing a lone vamp cruising around because he doesn’t know about you. You could be our ace in the hole. Would you like that, Michael?”  
  
“He said I wasn’t to hunt him.”  
  
Amanda said, “That was because he was worried you’d get caught. If you just hunt and find and then come right back and tell us, that’s different. Could you come right back, if you find him?”  
  
“Dunno. If it’s bad, might be I’d want to hurt somebody.”  
  
Dawn said sharply, “That’s not good enough, Michael.” She crossed right in front of him and scraped at the wall to find the light switch, figuring Spike wouldn’t have chosen this house if the power had been shut off. When she pushed the three switches she found, lights came on everywhere throughout the downstairs. As she’d thought, Mike was sitting there in vamp face. Meeting his somber golden eyes, Dawn continued, “You’re not a child, not a fledge, to do the first thing that comes into your head, no matter what it is. You have choices what to do, or not. It’s about time you started to make some. For instance, do you really want to hurt us?”  
  
“Might. But…it startled me, to feel somebody coming. I was afraid.”  
  
“Are you still afraid of us, Michael?”  
  
“No,” Mike admitted, and his face flowed and changed, and he was just a sad looking guy with untrimmed brown hair flopped over his forehead, sitting on the landing. Gaze averted now, dropped to his boots: no longer confrontational.  
  
“Can you make a promise and keep it?” Dawn asked him.  
  
“Maybe.” Mike thought about it and Dawn kept still, letting him. “Yes, I think so.”  
  
“If you can promise to look and come right back and report, then you can hunt him, Michael. Do you promise?”  
  
“If he didn’t want me to hunt so I wouldn’t get hurt,” Mike formulated slowly, “that’s up to me. To take that chance or not. If it’s just me. So OK, Dawn. I promise.”  
  
“Can you handle the bike?”  
  
Glancing up, Mike showed her a lazy smile. “Oh, I expect. I was a merc ten years. I know most kinds of transport.”  
  
Amanda asked, “A merc?”  
  
“Mercenary. I got paid to kill people. Whoever wasn’t paying me, pretty much. Not so different from now. Except the company didn’t smell so good.”  
  
Dawn said, “When you say things like that, it makes us nervous. We think maybe you want to hurt us.”  
  
“Maybe I do. But no Dawn, never no more. Spike would be real sad, was that to happen. So I wouldn’t do that. Just funning you a little. Scare you a little, but not bad. You can scare me back if you want. Say you’re gonna dust me if I don’t do right and like I promised.”  
  
“Don’t want to scare you, Michael,” Dawn replied soberly. “Not even for fun. We’re still too new to be certain what’s fun and what’s truly scary.”  
  
“That makes sense,” Mike decided. “So come dark, I’ll take the bike and hunt him. Then I’ll report back. That all right?”  
  
“That’s fine, Michael.”  
  
“I’d sooner you’d make it ‘Mike.’ And I won’t call you ‘Bit.’ Because that other, that’s his.”  
  
“Right you are. Hundred percent right, Mike.” Dawn thought a minute, then took the taser out of her pocket and held it out to him. He looked at it, then up at her. “You take it. In case you run into any trouble. A Turok-han, say. Or if Angel catches you, tries to hurt you.”  
  
“Oh, he won’t catch me. And he wouldn’t want you to go without.”  
  
Dawn had no trouble sorting out the “he’s.” “There’s more now. I can get another.”  
  
Mike nodded. “Order’s in. Then all right.” He took the taser and held it cupped in both hands. “It’s good you trust me like this. Makes sense. Like you truly don’t want me to get hurt. That if somebody has to get hurt, it’s not me. That maybe we’re like friends.”  
  
Very slowly and carefully Dawn reached out and touched his knee. Nothing personal, not his face, just his knee, and only for a moment. “I’d like to be friends with you. I like vamps, when they’ll let me. You vamps, you’re so downright. Direct. I like that about you.”  
  
“Clean,” Mike commented, putting the taser away in a front pocket. “Like Lawrence said about the desert. That it was clean…. I like that about vamps, too. You children go on, now. I have to rest. And you think about how we could be friends, and we’ll decide about that. Some other time.”  
  
The three SITs went outside, but Dawn lingered last to tell Mike, “When you keep your promise, Spike will be really proud of you when we tell him. That you’ve started choosing for yourself again. I know he wants that for you.”  
  
“You love him. Don’t you. And he lets you.”  
  
“Well, he’s mine. So he has to let me. He had my name in a poem tatted all the way up his arm, to show my claim on him. He’s proud of it.”  
  
“I know he is. I wish he’d let me.”  
  
“I think…we found the right distance. There’s nobody else standing where I’m standing, in relation to him. My sister, the Slayer, she has a different distance, and that’s hers. And the SITs, still a different distance than that. I think maybe you just need to find the right distance. That’s just yours. Not that many vamps he cares about, Mike. So there’s plenty of room.”  
  
“Ahuh. I’ll think about that. You go on now, Dawn. I need to rest. Then I’ll hunt.”


	18. Section 5: Into the Dark — Supplice d’Allégance

When Dawn came asking for a locator spell early on a Wednesday morning, Willow thought nothing of it. Such spells were routine. People were always losing things or each other.  
  
And Dawn barging into Willow’s room, asking for something or just wanting to chat, was routine, too. Willow accepted her because everybody else did and because for months, Casa Summers had become a place where strange teenagers popped up and challenged you for bathroom rights as if they’d always been there. In most ways, on a practical basis, Dawn was just another. Willow didn’t pay much attention, just tried to avoid getting trampled at meals. The new improved reality that included Dawn was pretty much like the old reality that didn’t, and Willow was much more concerned about acing her Western Civ. midterm, in make-up coursework, than about Buffy’s unremarkable, tiresomely energetic, and possibly artificial kid sister.  
  
Dawn was just Dawn.  
  
Collecting the salt shaker filled with very fine red powder, the _materia locus_ , Willow spread a topographical map of Sunnydale and environs out on the desk and sprinkled the _materia_ lightly over it. Then Dawn touched it with the focus she’d brought: a small rectangular object made of silver metal.  
  
Willow asked, “Isn’t that Spike’s lighter?”  
  
“Yeah. Giles found it, I guess up at the motel. I thought I’d take it to him.”  
  
Willow thought she vaguely remembered Angel saying everything was all super dandy fine, except Angel still didn’t want Spike underfoot at Casa Summers or anywhere in Buffy’s vicinity. So he’d parked Spike someplace and set him to investigating some practical aspects of the Hellmouth.  
  
“Give it to Angel tonight,” Willow suggested indifferently. “I’m sure he’ll see Spike gets it.”  
  
“I want to give it to him myself. I haven’t seen him in five days, and that’s a long time not to see somebody you’re used to seeing every day.”  
  
Not caring enough to dispute the matter, Willow spoke the operative part of the spell, then shook the map to slide the _materia locus_ across most of the middle. (If the middle had the X, there was no need to perform the trickier procedure of dusting the edges.) The _materia_ adhered to the map in a single, jewel-like dot, marking an address on Albert Terrace, six streets away, in the middle of the block.  
  
Having studied the map, Dawn trotted off, and Willow forgot the whole thing completely until Dawn caught her having lunch in the kitchen.  
  
“Eew,” said Dawn, with an appropriate expression. “What’s that?”  
  
“Sprout soup. Want some?”  
  
“Thanks, but I’d rather live uninhabited by internal Triffids…. Willow, something’s not kosher.”  
  
“Well, I’m the good one to tell, all right,” Willow responded amiably. “My credentials are a little out of date, but card-carrying Jewish person here. Wicca Jewish. So: what’s not kosher?”  
  
Dawn leaned both elbows on the counter. Frowning, she slapped absently at her hair, which was showing too much of an affinity for Willow’s soup. “The map point, the locus, is one of the abandoned houses. Grass up to Yo.” Her flat hand put the grass at waist high. “When I knocked, nobody answered. I called that it was me, and still nobody answered. So I waited a little while, watched a mutt marking territory, and then knocked again and rang the bell and called, kicked the door, everything. And Angel came to the door. It’s one of those houses with a big porch overhang, like here, so he could do that and not go all flamey. And he told me Spike wasn’t there, which I knew perfectly well he was, and I showed the lighter, and he got a funny expression on his face and offered to pass it along. The lighter, not his face. Does Angelus look like Angel?”  
  
Suddenly Willow decided she didn’t want any more soup. “Angelus looks exactly like Angel, except for real mean eyes. The only difference is on the inside. Angelus has eyes like a snake.”  
  
“Well, if that was Angel, he has the mean eyes down cold. And I mean _cold_. Spike’s been gone nearly a week. Reasonable reasons were given. Except that they seem to have been lies. I don’t like it that Angel’s telling me Spike’s not there when he is.”  
  
“Did you tell him that? That you knew he was lying?”  
  
“Wednesday’s not my stupid day. I tried to look like the biggest idiot birthed, or not, since the last Ice Age and skipped off in my girlish way, tra la.”  
  
“Well, Spike _really_ doesn’t like me reading him. You know that.”  
  
“Make an exception. Blame it on me, he hardly ever murders me when he’s mad. Just find out if he’s all right.”  
  
“Go outside,” Willow directed absently. Catching Dawn’s indignant being-sent-away look, Willow explained, “Your watching is a distraction.”  
  
As Dawn obediently zipped out the back door, Willow tried to decide the best approach: what she should do, as opposed to what she could do.  
  
Willow was making up coursework because she’d spent six months of near house-arrest at the Devon coven penitentiary (literally) following her out-of-control attempt to end the world.  
  
And she’d been penitent, all right: the coven had made her face her nerd arrogance, founded in the conviction of her own irrelevance, so whatever little trick such a powerless nerdy twerp could do must not count or matter, must be all right.  
  
Like steal someone’s memory. Or refuse to recognize anyone else’s right to selfhood when it inconvenienced or displeased her or she simply thought she could make better choices for them than they could, walking in and out of their minds at will. Or perform dangerous blood magic to raise a friend from the dead…against that friend’s will and without her consent…and then get in a royal snit for not being thanked for it. Or try to make of her own personal grief a force to incinerate the earth. As if the power to do it, the pain to want to, and the self-absorption not to care who else she hurt absolved her of all responsibility.  
  
Now, knowing herself to be a powerful witch dangerously lacking in safeguards, knowledge, or wisdom sufficient to render her harmless without also taking great care, Willow was very controlled and deliberate. She’d found terrifying the realization that she could do irrevocable things--things no amount of sorries and guilt cookies could make right again.  
  
These days, Willow was much more respectful of the Law of Unintended Consequences and of trespassing beyond other people’s rightful boundaries.  
  
Spike had told her to keep the hell out of his head, and she’d dutifully respected that. So she opened the connection now on the mental equivalent of tippy-toes, ready to retreat at the first sign of a yell.  
  
_Spike?_  
(slow, indifferent attention) _Yes._  
(no yell yet. hopeful/nervous) _You mind this?  
No._  
  
Reassured of consent, Willow tried to interpret the tone, the intent of what she was getting. Because the mental voice didn’t, to her, “sound” like Spike at all. There were no overtones or undertones. No vague, swirly, smoky surround of emotional affect, the way there generally was with anybody. With Spike, that normally took the form of what she’d thought of as a “whiskey edge”: brown, strongly focused, with a bite to it, no pun intended. Instead, this was mechanical: like having a conversation with a computer fitted for voice commands and responses.  
  
Something not kosher indeed.  
  
_Are you OK?  
No. Yes.  
Explain no yes--I don’t understand.  
Doing what I must.  
And what’s Angel doing? To you???  
What he must. I think he enjoys it more than I do.  
Dawn’s worried._  
(alarm; effortful rousing concern) _Keep her out of it. Away from it. Please._  
  
Willow was shocked into staring at her soup: Spike had just asked her something _Please!_  
  
She flipped her soup into the sink, then rinsed and refilled the bowl with tap water, all full of chlorinated goodness doing brave battle with the sewage residue. She set the bowl on the table. Staring into the smoothing surface of the water, Willow conjugated the Latin verb _videre:_ all the forms of seeing. With the mental link as the center, like a camera mount, she saw in the water’s surface what Spike could see, like a reflection in a small round mirror.  
  
In a slow pan from left to right, she saw a dark board floor and above it bare walls with the lighter rectangles where pictures had been removed. Crooked rough plywood that almost certainly covered windows. No direct sunlight, and nearly no light at all, was admitted to this room. Your basic empty house, refitted for vampire occupancy.  
  
This had probably been the living room. She saw no doors leading outside. A doorless arch to a dining/kitchen area where someone was moving. Then, as the vision panned farther to the right, an open door and a hall beyond. connecting to some other part of the house.  
  
The motion in the kitchen became Angel, broad-shouldered and solemn, intent on his task: setting up a small, cheap folding table. He returned to the kitchen and brought back a big Kool-Aid style clear glass pitcher filled with what had to be icy cold water, going by the condensation. He placed the sweating pitcher on the little table. Added a glass. Considered the arrangement, the effect.  
  
Because there’d been an effect. An interior lock on a target: like an alcoholic seeing liquor or…what somebody incredibly, desperately thirsty would feel looking at a pitcher of ice water.  
  
Willow had never been as thirsty as that. She could only guess. But she wasn’t in any serious doubt.  
  
Angel said something, but Willow could only see, not hear. But because the perspective didn’t change, she knew Spike hadn’t moved. Not an inch. She tried to nudge his attention to himself, so she could see if there were ropes, restraints. But the lock on the pitcher was too strong, and his awareness of her intruding presence too dim, for her to influence.  
  
She didn’t want to give Angel any reason to suspect her scrying. So she kept inner silence while Spike fought the pull of the water. Willow would have thought only blood could affect him that way. But apparently if you were dehydrated enough, water would do just fine.  
  
Not that there wasn’t blood. When Spike finally broke the lock and let his gaze fall to the nothing that was the floor, Willow realized why the boards were dark. Blood. Lots of it. Some dried black, some fresh. A whole bunch of flies taking an interest in it.  
  
As far as she could tell, there was nothing keeping Spike in place. Nothing to prevent him from taking the pitcher and drinking it all down. Nothing, in fact, to prevent him from crossing the room to wherever the outside door was and leaving. Except that he didn’t.  
  
If Angel was still there, Spike had ceased to notice him.  
  
Willow quickly grabbed her bowl and drank all the water. It tasted awful: bad city water--a tautology. She drank it anyway. Besides, she figured she didn’t have to see any more to know the meaning of what was going on.  
  
(equivalent of whisper) _Spike, why are you doing this?  
Because I must. Don’t say to me anything you don’t want repeated._  
(startlement, indignation) _You’d tell?  
If I’m asked. Yes._  
(derisive) _What are the chances you’re going to be asked if a witch is talking to you in your head?  
Low. Ask what you must, then go away.  
Why?_  
(slower, flatter) _Because it’s a comfort._  
(concerned, a little touched) _It is?  
Yes.  
Then why don’t you want me to stay?  
I am not to have comfort. This is not about comfort. It delays the end. _  
(startled alarm) _What end?_  
(nothing: no reaction)  
_What end, Spike? How is this supposed to end?_  
  
Willow lost the connection in a blaze of static. Dawn had come back and was leaning on the counter again. Expecting a report.  
  
Willow chewed on her lip. “Angel and Spike are having some kind of a face-off. Spike insists it’s necessary, and you should keep out of it. There’s bad parts to it but I don’t know enough to call it yet.”  
  
“Did he yell? Throw you out?”  
  
“He…has other things on his mind. He didn’t object.”  
  
“So: if I go back over there and start yelling my head off, is that gonna make things better or worse?”  
  
Willow shook her head. “He _really, really, really_ doesn’t want you getting involved in this, Dawn.”  
  
Dawn pensively bit at a nail-edge. “‘Really’ cubed. That’s severe. What if we tell Buffy? Is that ‘really’ cubed, too?”  
  
“I don’t know. Not yet, Dawn. I got the strong sense that this is something he made up his mind to and is really-cubed determined to see all the way through to the end.”  
  
“What end?” Dawn demanded.  
  
“I don’t know yet,” Willow temporized. “I’ll monitor, as much as he’ll let me.”  
  
“Willow. There’s something I’ve been looking for the chance to talk about with you. About me and Spike.” When Willow looked up, Dawn was leaning both elbows on the countertop and drawing idly on the surface with an index finger. So averted, so conspicuously non-confrontational, that it was faintly alarming. Dawn continued, “For the record, I existed independently before Spike recovered me. Actually, it was something we did together. The operational force was connection, not a spell at all. No template and no summoning were involved. There’s nothing in what we did that would be of the least use to anyone else. In reconstructing somebody, for instance. I’ve been waiting for you to bring it up, so I could get it out of the way. But you never have. I think what I think you’ve been thinking is a really terrible idea, but we don’t have to discuss it because it’s not possible unless you’re willing to settle for the equivalent of the Buffybot. And that, you could have done anytime. And you haven’t. So I think you know as well as I do that it’s impossible. What’s gone is gone. And I’m sorry, but that’s how it is.”  
  
“Oh,” said Willow, feeling as though she’d been rammed by a truck she hadn’t even seen coming. “But….” She was thinking about Spike’s strange aura. But that would be accounted for by either opening up or being forced open by a complex and powerful aetherial connection--exactly what Dawn had described.  
  
Finally lifting her large, implacable eyes, Dawn added, “If Spike’s in trouble and you’re the contact, I need to be sure you don’t think something could be available from him, or from me, that we don’t have. I don’t think this is a good time for private agendas. When Spike’s hands were hurt so bad, you tried to help. And you told me that was because you had history with him, even though all of it wasn’t good. You said he was a mensch. And I say, when push comes to shove, Spike is _us._ And Angel’s not. So you--”  
  
On a different frequency, abrupt pain. Huge pain. Willow did the equivalent of scooting away fast, so as not to be overwhelmed by an onrushing tsunami.  
  
“What was that?” Dawn asked, shrewdly attentive.  
  
Willow fanned a hand in front of her face, then slapped it onto her chest, heart doing doubletime waltz, sitting jammed all the way back in her chair. “Let’s say…heavy duty hint that this isn’t the greatest time for company over there. I’ll check back in a while. When I figure out more of what’s going on, I’ll let you know.”  
  
“All right. If Spike said wait, I’ll wait. But the minute he says something else, tell me. I’ll be at Casa Spike.” As Dawn sauntered outside, Willow thought of asking, _Who are you and what have you done with Dawn?_ But (a) they’d already done that and (b) Willow wasn’t sure she wanted to know.  
  
**********  
  
Dawn ran to Casa Mike. Opening the door just a crack, she called, “Mike, it’s me. Dawn. Can I come in?” Because it was important for him to know she and the SITs weren’t just gonna come waltzing in whenever, during his sleeping time, into his own place. She’d done that with Spike, just burst into his crypt. She was ashamed, thinking back, how rude and thoughtless that had been. Vamps didn’t have much, maybe didn’t need much. But that was no reason to make them feel vulnerable and unsafe in the only place they had that was truly their own.  
  
“Come in, Dawn.”  
  
Mike was sitting in one of the big chairs, a little bleary, rubbing his eyes. Had probably been asleep but staying near the door, waiting for word. The same as all of them were.  
  
Dawn perched on an arm of the adjoining chair. “Willow’s confirmed. She has it now. She’s talking to him. Spike doesn’t want us interfering.”  
  
“Willow--that’s Red. The witch.”  
  
“Right. She can talk to Spike inside his head. And I know he hates that, but he hasn’t shouted her out. So I figure it’s bad, Mike.”  
  
“Well, we pretty well knew that,” Mike responded calmly. “If Angel meant him to die, if that was what this was for, he’d already be gone. And he’s not. So he’ll last awhile, until we come.”  
  
It had taken Mike two nights to identify the house on Albert. About three in the morning, Dawn and all the SITs camped out at Casa Spike had heard what they’d been waiting for: the sound of the approaching motorcycle. Before Mike could even dismount, they’d all run out to the curb, and he’d told them. Then he’d said, “I’m going back there now,” and started an argument because Kim had been worried he’d just break in, or try to go after Angel, or follow some other vamp impulse and ruin things. Mike had listened until Kim was done, then said, “I can wait. Wait just in range. So I can feel him, and he can feel me. Won’t know it’s me, of course, but if he’s scared, if he’s hurt, maybe it would be better to know somebody’s there. Steady. Not leaving. Don’t think you should forbid it, Kim.”  
  
Then Dawn had asked in a small voice if she could come too, keep vigil, and Mike had told her that wouldn’t be good because Angel knew her, knew her smell, and well might notice something and come looking. “Best if it’s just me. Just some vamp he don’t know, don’t mean nothing to him.”  
  
However reluctantly, they’d all accepted his judgment on that, so he’d kept the vigil alone that night and would again tonight, until Willow relayed the word it was OK to go and get Spike out of there.  
  
Now Dawn asked, “Do you know what he’s doing? Why he’s doing this?”  
  
“I’m only six years old, Dawn. In this life. Lots of things I don’t know. Maybe he’ll tell us. Afterward.”  
  
Dawn slammed fists onto her knees. “I want to know _now!_ ”  
  
Understanding it was impatience, not a real demand, Mike smiled at her. “When there’s nothing to do, you wait. It all comes around. You wait your chance, and it comes. Too bad you can’t be better at waiting. It frets you so.”  
  
It tickled Dawn a little, to have Mike offer sympathy for her human shortcomings.  
  
“I should get back now. And you need to rest. When anything happens, I’ll come tell you.”  
  
“All right.”  
  
Dawn got up and started to go, then looked back at him: so calm and quiet, so unlike Spike with his compulsive fidgets and coiled suddenness. Knowing she was still within striking range and he could easily take her before she’d know what was happening. Knowing that didn’t matter, any more than it did with Spike.  
  
She’d seen Mike often enough in game face that it was easy for her to imagine it: the broad, overhung brow; the wide golden eyes and steady gaze. “You’re almost your own person again. Spike will be glad.”  
  
“Yeah.” The simple word, simply accepting and agreeing.  
  
“Sometimes I imagine Spike as a cat. Like a cougar. Sometimes he reminds me. Is it OK if I imagine you like a lion?”  
  
“Can’t help what you imagine, Dawn. Don’t mind it, though. Lions aren’t like the pictures people have in their minds about them. But nothing wrong with the picture, if that’s what you want. Not a picture, though. I’m a vamp, Dawn. Be best if I remind you of that.”  
  
“You’re right. Best as what you are. It only seems easier to imagine something else. Because I truly don’t know lions, either. It only seems more familiar. It isn’t, though, really….”  
  
Dawn left then, carefully shutting the door tight behind her against the sunshine, and ran to Casa Spike to wait for further word.  
  
**********  
  
Willow made a cup of soothing tea and took it down to the basement. Spike’s cot was gone, wrecked, but there was a chair down there for waiting out laundry cycles. Willow put it where the cot had been to increase the affinity. Be in a place where he’d been, see what he’d once been accustomed to seeing.  
  
She’d waited an hour before attempting contact, but found the pain still in full flood and yanked clear again. So she went up to the second floor and resumed her search for the amulet and actually got interested because there was something quite promising on e-Bay. Not enough of the right details to be certain. She put in a moderate bid, then checked on magical implements available on her other bookmarked sites and registered a couple of carefully worded searches on two of the supplier sites. When she next looked at her watch, another two hours had passed. So she took a bathroom break, then did the turns back down to the basement and the chair.  
  
Pain still there, but just the wreckage after a flood had passed. She could move it aside, not be distracted by it, clear a different channel and focus only on that.  
  
(soft, careful) _Spike?  
Yes.  
What the hell was that?  
I was not attending. I was punished. _  
(contrite) _Did I distract you?  
Yes. _  
(more contrite) _Sorry._  
(no response)  
_I can make it stop. I can make [u]him[/u] stop!_  
(rush of NO, anxiety, anger) _No. Let it alone. It must finish.  
But why? Why are you letting him do this to you?  
It’s necessary. _  
(exasperated, concerned, worried) _Necessary for what, Spike?_  
(flat; more distant) _Necessary.  
Why is it necessary for you to let Angel torture you?  
Supplice d’Allégance.  
Supplice d’what?  
Supplice d’Allégance. Pain is the means. Not the end.  
OK, what’s the end, then? What is this goddam for? _  
(slow, distant, objective) _Vampires are not kindly creatures. Pain is a form of conversation. Angel and I are having a conversation. Finally I will give the right answer and it will be over.  
What’s the right answer, Spike?  
Angel is waiting for NO. I have not yet given him NO. He will force me until I do. Then he’ll break the NO and wait for YES. He won’t believe NO until he’s forced it. Then he may not believe YES. _  
(determined, trying to understand) _What happens if he doesn’t believe the YES? Or you can’t give him the YES he wants?  
Then he’ll keep beating down the NO until I can give nothing.  
What I’m hearing is ‘until you’re dead.’ Am I hearing that right? _  
(no answer)  
(pause: thinking; cold) _And how far are you from the NO?  
Very close now.  
Am I in the way of that?_  
(immense black hole of exhaustion opening, widening, deepening, spreading out in every direction) _I don’t know. It’s a comfort. I don’t know.  
If I left you alone, could you rest?  
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know._ (echoes, endlessly repeating, diminishing until she could no longer hear them)  
_I’ll come back in a little while. Rest now, if you can._  
(no response)  
  
**********  
  
Willow had something now, a handle: Supplice d’Allégance. Research mode. She dashed upstairs and got back on the laptop.  
  
Although the Council of Watchers headquarters had been destroyed, along with nearly all the senior members of the council, the council library was in Oxford and hadn’t been touched. And one of the council’s projects for the last thirty-some years was scanning in the original old manuscripts, and the translations, beginning with the oldest and rarest of the documents, books, and codices. During her time with the coven, Willow had been allowed to assist this lifetime project, adding translations of some of the most frequently referenced texts. She still had access to the online archives. She thought there was a good chance a basic word-search would yield results.  
  
Allégance, that was simple: something like allegiance, I pledge allegiance. Given vampire semi-feudal social arrangements, probably something closer to _fealty_. And supplice, maybe Norman French--  
  
There it was. She had the whole phrase. Supplice d’Allégance. Translation, Ordeal of Fealty, with supplice having the implication of torture, trial by torture. Sounded like she was in the right ballpark.  
  
She clicked on the link and was into a late 15th century manuscript about the semi-legendary exploits of Vlad the Impaler, known to his many friends as Dracula, who Spike claimed owed him eleven pounds and was a notorious tightwad. Of course Spike said that about anybody who wouldn’t loan him money….  
  
Willow skimmed the translation.  
  
It seemed that during that round of wars with the Ottoman (read: Turkish) Empire in the 1400’s in which old Vlad had made his bones, so to speak, and gained his first notoriety, one Strelzborg (or –berg or –bergen, etc.), a Lithuanian baron (read: Master Vampire, in spite of the waffling footnotes and cautious annotations) had arrived offering support and troops nearly equal to what Vlad himself could command. A desirable ally--assuming he’d stay bought. Vlad was never noted as a trusting sort. So he’d required the Supplice d’Allégance of this nice, helpful volunteer to ensure that Vlad would be able to depend on his loyalty. It had gone on for two weeks, or two months, depending on the translation, at which point the hopeful Strelz-something had conspicuously failed to thrive, and likely dusted, and Vlad had co-opted all his troops, and everything had been all hunky-dory and kittens and Christmas. Vlad had what he wanted without the annoyance of a possible rival or rebel. End of story.  
  
One of the 18th century commentators, one Cedric Giles, shrewdly observed that although this was the only extant mention of the ritual, knowledge of vampiric social customs was so limited that the possibility of its being relatively common in the upper strata of vampire high-politik should not be discounted. The fact that the ordinary vamp quite possibly might never have heard of, much less observed or been involved in, such a formal ordeal didn’t mean it wasn’t well known by European Master Vampires of the time and possibly since.  
  
Trust a Giles, Willow thought, to not take the received word as the last word, bless his suspicious quintessentially Giles-ish heart.  
  
Likewise, Willow thought, the top levels of the international vampire hierarchy: the Old Blood, as it were. Like the Order of Aurelius. Of which the highest ranking members she knew of were one Angel/Angelus and one William the Bloody, more commonly known as Spike. Sire and childe. Kin and rivals almost every way there was, and neither of them missing any chance to slander the other, an antipathy almost palpable….  
  
Willow had no question she now knew what was going on. Either Spike or Angel had initiated the damn ritual as a basis for their cooperation in the fight against the First, in which Angel had received a field promotion to general via Buffy upon arrival and Spike had no official standing at all and had even been forbidden Casa Summers altogether. Banned from the field. Whoever had first come up with the idea, Spike had consented to it to break the stalemate. Angel didn’t like him, didn’t trust him, and certainly would never depend on him. And Spike wanted _in_. Wanted it bad enough to go through whatever hell Angel’s nasty little paleolithic mind could contrive, to get in. Get finally to NO: involuntary bedrock resistance in extremis. A true ultimate NO beyond which was only death. And then maybe finally to YES--a surrender Angel could believe because it’d been forced, and forged, out of the worst pain one vampire could inflict upon another, willingly suffered, without ropes or shackles or any other constraint except the will to continue and endure, no matter what.  
  
Angel, cynical bastard that he was, probably figured Spike would die in the process like the Sainted Strelz-whatever. And good riddance, it wasn’t Angel’s fault, no locks or handcuffs preventing Spike from walking out at any time.  
  
But Spike wouldn’t have gone into a thing like that expecting to die, no matter what Angel’s expectations were. Angel, Willow thought, tapping a stylus against her teeth, quite likely didn’t know about Spike’s little vacation with the First. Six weeks of torment nearly as inventive and thorough as anything kin could manage. And Spike had come out of that all broken up but nothing that a week or two of healing couldn’t fix, and hardly any crazier than before, and time had taken care of that, too. Spike had already been to NO and back again. He might have liked his odds. He would have risked it.  
  
If there was one thing Willow had learned about Spike, it was that he absolutely throve on crazy risks that would have taken out anybody less wholeheartedly committed. He’d remarked to her once that the trick of skating on thin ice was _skate fast_. In a figurative sense, of course, this being sunny non-freezing California. And Spike was the absolute king of _skate fast_.  
  
Yeah: she was certain she had it now, the gamble to which Spike had committed his body and his sanity and his life, win or lose.  
  
She waited until midnight before attempting contact again. The first time, she was whited out by pain. The next time, she found herself intruding on what felt uncomfortably like sex, so she backed right out of that too. A dream, maybe. Likely a dream. The third time, she made contact.  
  
(softly, cautiously) _Spike?  
Yes.  
Are you to NO yet?  
Very close. Soon. Don’t stay. You’ll be hurt.  
I know about the Supplice d’Allégance. I understand the game plan, I think. How can I help you get to YES?  
Doesn’t matter. It will go as it goes. You’re not made for vampire conversations, witch.  
Are you?_  
(no answer)  
_I don’t want to be a distraction. Is it worse in the day or in the night?  
I don’t know.  
Explain.  
No comparisons. Only now. No duration. Only now. No day, night. (a sort of tingling silence)  
And?  
My sight has been taken. Harder to know, connect, without it. Go away, witch. You don’t want to know this. You’re not like us. It hurts you to know.  
That’s my business, buster.  
Is it night?_  
Willow blinked blurred eyes at the lighted face of her clock. _It’s 2:45 in the morning. On Wednesday. I mean Thursday._  
(attention; a feeling of turning, orientation, as though centering in an infinite amount of dark, empty space)  
  
Interrupted by the onset of another siege of excruciating pain that Willow had to withdraw from. It was still going on when she fell finally asleep, to incredibly bad dreams of the naked-in-public and being chased by monsters variety. It was still going on each time she awoke. When she looked at her breakfast and thought it might as well have been a bowl of dirt, it was still going on. It was almost noon before it suddenly broke, ended, and that was such a relief that Willow burst into tears and had to spin Buffy a completely ridiculous and incoherent yarn about PMS and lack of exercise and something to do with newt’s eyes, she didn’t know how that’d gotten in there, but her explanation seemed to need a little more bizarrity and eye of newt was definitely it.  
  
When she tried to contact Spike again, she suspected she’d completely blown out her capacity for contact. At least she got no response--not even attention. She hoped to hell he’d finally gotten to NO because she didn’t know about him but she wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take.  
  
But each hour through that day, she tried again, just the same. Because if her immaterial company constituted a comfort, she wouldn’t have denied it to a dog dying in the road and she was wound up about as tight as she could get with rage at Angel.  
  
That evening, he came by: talking to Buffy, sitting in the front room, walking in the yard. All solemn and big and seeming-simple. Willow couldn’t stand to look at him. She couldn’t have returned him a civil word if she’d tried, and just hustled off whenever she spotted him. If he so much as said one crosswise word to anybody where she could hear it, she was gonna do something unexpected and rather ugly to his throat from the inside and see how he liked her form of conversation.  
  
She knew well that Angelus was the cruelest, most cold-blooded bastard who’d ever walked the earth. Until now, she’d assumed Angel was different.  
  
After Angel left, Willow had a slight collision of priorities with Kennedy, who wanted a cuddle before setting out on patrol. Then Willow figured What the hell and gave in, she needed some touch-comfort after what she’d been through. Just out on the front porch on the glider, nothing intense that was apt to frighten the horses, the way they’d said in the coven, anything was OK as long as you didn’t do it in the street and frighten the horses….  
  
Drowsily comfortable with Kennedy petting and occasionally smooching, her arms around sweet soft girlflesh, Willow reached out for another check.  
  
_Spike?_  
(vague bewilderment) _It hurts._  
Willow frowned and came to alert because it wasn’t the same clipped mechanical “voice” as before. It was somehow a child’s voice.  
_What hurts, baby?_  
(deeper bewilderment) _Everything.  
Did you get to NO?  
I was bad. Took some wet from my arm. That’s bad. Not allowed to have the wet._  
  
Trying to figure that out, Willow came up with the appalling picture of Spike biting his arm, trying to drink his own blood, and that was so awful she hoped to hell that constituted a NO because if it didn’t, she couldn’t imagine what he’d have to do before Angel would acknowledge it, finally, as a refusal, resistance.  
_Hang on, baby. A little longer. We’re coming for you. Don’t be afraid._  
(no answer)  
  
“What is it?” Kennedy demanded, seeing Willow’s resolve-face and maybe even knowing what it meant.  
  
“Get Dawn here. She’s at Casa Spike. Phone her. Then the patrol: first point--  
  
“The mark, yeah?”  
  
“OK, first _mark_ is 3650 Albert Terrace. Wait there, outside. As backup. But go call Dawn first.”  
  
When Dawn flashed onto the porch, Willow told her, “Dawn, we’re going after Spike. Two things: you get Buffy. I don’t much care what you tell her, except don’t mention Angel. It’s the house on Albert Terrace. Second, no matter what you see, no matter what happens, don’t be scared. Nothing bad is gonna happen to you. But it may get real scary and you’ve gotta expect that, be prepared.”  
  
“Scary,” repeated Dawn, perfectly dead-pan. “Right.” And she was gone again, on the run.  
  
Willow went ahead on her own. She didn’t want to have to try to do explanations. In fact, she thought the fewer explanations, the better. Predictably, she found the SIT patrol already in place, on the sidewalk beyond the high, uncut lawn. In fact, Willow thought it was _all_ the SITs: twenty-five, or however many of them there were now, she could never keep count.  
  
She saw Buffy and Dawn coming from the corner, Dawn flapping her arms up and down, clearly offering some kind of explanation, circling Buffy like a tall, skinny yapping dog. Fine: that piece in place then.  
  
Willow told Kennedy, “You’re with me. Everybody else stays here, as backup.”  
  
Kennedy turned to say something to Amanda, then turned and moved, taking position at Willow’s left. Which left the right-hand position to Buffy, making the turn from the sidewalk and then down the walk.  
  
“All right,” Buffy demanded of Willow, “what’s this about?”  
  
“Spike’s in there. He’s hurt. I intend to get him out, and I thought you’d want to come with.”  
  
Buffy frowned incredulously, but Willow didn’t wait for further conversation. She went to the door and gave it five good bangs without touching it. “Angel, it’s me: Willow. Open up. Now.”  
  
Hardly a minute later, the door opened and Angel was there, looking at Willow and then doing a double-take at finding Dawn, Kennedy, and Buffy on the front step behind her. And then all the SITs assembled out on the sidewalk.  
  
Having apparently taken in the essentials of the situation, Buffy brushed past him and he moved out of her way, trying to choose something to say as Willow and the two girls also went past.  
  
Willow hadn’t seen the inside of the house from this direction, but when Buffy glanced a question in the hall, Willow pointed to the second door on the right.  
  
“What’s this about?” Angel was asking mildly from behind them. “Buffy?”  
  
There was no room to get past, so he disappeared, circling through the kitchen.  
  
There was no lamp lit in the living room, no light of any kind, so Willow made a glow between her clasped hands and tossed it to hover near the middle of the ceiling. Then she started looking for Spike. But Buffy had already found him. Assuming what looked like a dirty pile of rags was Spike.  
  
Crouched, Buffy swiveled with an incredulous, accusatory glare just in time for it to meet Angel, arriving in the kitchen arch and mostly filling it.  
  
“Buffy, I can explain. It was necessary. A vampire thing, none of….” Angel’s voice trailed off. Apparently he could see his explanation wasn’t winning him any Buffy points whatever. But it seemed that he was at least as determined as Spike not to have the ritual aborted, incomplete. In a flat, resigned voice, he commanded, “Spike. Take Dawn.”  
  
The pile of rags moved. It had two legs and bones and that was about all Willow could tell about it in that first second because it wasn’t recognizably Spike at all.  
  
Willow threw at him, in her head, _Do it! Now! She’s protected, just do it!_  
  
The skeletal thing _that had no eyes_ went into a questing balance for a second, then flung itself straight at Dawn. Although both girls were armed with tasers, they had no chance to use them because Angel caught his creature up in his arms and flung it clear across the room into the far wall. Hard. It tried to rise, still trying to come, obey that last command. But Angel shouldered Dawn aside and strode across the room, ignoring Buffy, ignoring them all, looking as though he intended to pound the thing into powder on the floor. And again caught it in his arms and held it, dropping to his knees, gentling it with one big hand, saying quietly, “Enough, Will. That’s enough now. It’s all right now.”  
  
Willow shut her eyes, breathing hard. Spike had made it to YES.  
  
Buffy was standing, hands on hips, rigid with fury. And Angel still wasn’t paying her a bit of attention, still soothing his horribly desiccated childe. Undoing the cuff button and rolling up his sleeve, he presented his bare forearm, saying, “It’s allowed now, Will. You can change. Go ahead. It’s allowed.”  
  
The wraith Spike had allowed himself to become clutched at the arm and began soundlessly feeding. It was really grotesque and unpleasant to watch, so Willow didn’t.  
  
Buffy announced in a take-no-prisoners voice, “We’re taking him home.”  
  
“Not yet,” Angel responded with monumental calm, still not looking around. “He needs me to take care of him now. You wouldn’t know how. What to do.”  
  
“Then you tell me. But he comes home. Now.”  
  
Without further argument, Angel rose with Spike in his arms--trailing limbs that were no more than parchment over bone--and carried him into the hall and out the front door with Buffy trotting right behind, all kinds of stormclouds in her face.  
  
Willow absently dismissed Kennedy to take the SITs on the scheduled patrol. Dawn, pocketing her taser, remarked, “I have to get a good look so I can tell him how awful he was,” and ran off after Angel and Buffy. Catching up, Dawn lifted a hand and found a cluster of bones, maybe a hand, to clasp.  
  
Following along, in no hurry now, Willow could hear Angel doggedly trying to explain. That after all, it wasn’t as though Dawn was _really_ her sister and anyway there’d been no danger, he was there and had stopped it. And Spike (Will, as he called him) had agreed to this, it was an established vampire custom for settling rank, and that wasn’t getting him anywhere either and he should have saved his breath, he was only digging himself in deeper by trying to be reasonable. Buffy wasn’t inclined to be reasonable. She’d taken one look and been horrified and furious, and still was. Having lost the moral high ground, Angel should have just shut up and waited for the worst of it to blow over.  
  
Willow could have told him. But she didn’t. She was pretty well satisfied with the way things were going, all on their own, and saw no further need to interfere.  
  
Making Angel carry Spike upstairs and settle him in Buffy’s own bed seemed a bit much, but Buffy was nothing if not thorough. Still trailing behind, Willow thought she could see some improvement just from the one feeding: Spike looked more mummified than destroyed. You could recognize the hair. But the empty eyesockets still were something Willow couldn’t regard steadily.  
  
Dawn had continued to hold his hand. She looked up at Angel as though vaguely wondering why he was still there. Buffy, standing at the bedside, was looking at Angel the same way, except she wasn’t doing vague, she was doing impatient.  
  
Angel stood unhappily a moment more, then said, “Nothing but water, and not much of that. No more than a pint in six hours.”  
  
“No blood?” Dawn asked.  
  
“No. Not yet. I’ll come back tomorrow for that. All right. Good night.”  
  
He turned and left, and Willow noticed the conspicuous lack of anybody wishing him good night in return.  
  
She could almost feel sorry for him. Or maybe not.  
  
Although Angel had won the battle he knew about, the Supplice d’Allégance, it was becoming increasingly clear to Willow that Spike had won the real war: the one for the allegiance of the Summers women, the SITs, and even herself.  
  
None of them able to tolerate the ruthless absolutes of vampire “conversations” whose words were blood and agony. Spike had only to suffer it, survive it, and let the fact of what had been done to him--and who’d done it--speak for themselves.  
  
Willow knew she’d never be able to look at Angel the same again. Nor, she thought, would any of them. He might still be a general in the present war, but he’d been revealed as a monster well worthy of Angelus, soul and all, and nobody would want to be in a room with him, after this, any longer than they could help. Angel might know planning, and warfare, and vampire lore; Spike knew women.  
  
Dawn was still fondly holding Spike’s skeletal, inhuman hand. Buffy was pawing through drawers, choosing a scarf to cover the horrible absence of his eyes.  
  
Considering the wreck on Buffy’s bed, Willow reflected that Mr. Skate Fast had put everything he had on the line for the highest stakes he cared about and come away with it all.  
  
And Angel still didn’t even know it.  
  
Willow wasn’t inclined to enlighten him. Ever.


	19. Section 5: Into the Dark — Revamping

Nothing of Spike that Buffy could recognize remained.  
  
His voice was silent. His eyes had been replaced by hideousness. His smooth ivory skin was wrinkled beige, slack and tissue-thin over apparent bones. White hair like short dead grass. No grace, no strength, no energy. No motion of any kind. Not even breath. His face was lipless, like a skull. His ears were shriveled. He looked like something that had been in a coffin in the ground for months.  
  
She’d often thought that sleeping, he looked dead because he was still and breathed only occasionally if at all. The only time his skin felt warm was when he’d just fed, or had a hot shower, or absorbed some of her heat directly, skin to skin.  
  
She’d had no idea.  
  
This was dead. This was Death itself. She had only Willow’s word for it that Spike was in any meaningful way still alive in this horrible husk and still couldn’t bring herself to wholly believe it.  
  
Dawn had held his hand. Sitting in a chair by the bed, Buffy felt a kind of panic at the thought of touching him and only stayed in the chair by force of will.  
  
Vamps dusted so neatly. A breeze, and nothing was left. Very seldom was Buffy required to confront death’s true and commonest leavings.  
  
He looked, Buffy thought, about the way she herself must have looked before Willow’s resurrection spell had flooded through her, plumping tissues, rounding contours. Restoring eyes, nose, lips. The pretty parts. The soft parts. The capacity for smiles, glances, expressions. Kisses. Before that, this was how she had looked.  
  
And beyond question she knew that if she’d risen like that, Spike would somehow have known her and changelessly loved her and still impossibly believed her beautiful. Because what he mostly loved was the fact of her, not the appearance. The connection itself, that defined each of them in terms of the other.  
  
The one unchanging fact in her world, welcome or unwelcome, these past years, had been that Spike hearts Buffy, even if she was calling him filthy names and beating the crap out of him, even when his idea of courtship was poking her with a cattle prod, chaining her up in his crypt, and threatening to feed her to Dru if she wouldn’t give him some glimmer of hope.  
  
Ah, Romance.  
  
They’d come such a long way to come together, even if it had mostly been like two produce trucks colliding and squawking chickens everywhere.  
  
It seemed to Buffy she’d been presented with an ultimatum. If she couldn’t love Spike now, like this, she would never love him at all. If she kept the distance her physical revulsion commanded, she’d never break out of her isolation or truly touch him. And she’d never see anything other than this. Because this was the truth of what Spike was: a barely animated long-dead corpse. All the rest was pretty smoke and mirrors. And magic. Just as she was.  
  
She had been such a thing as this. And still was, underneath it all. She had to somehow convince herself to feel, toward such grotesque and minimal meat, the fondness that soul owed to soul outside of time and appearance.  
  
The prospect terrified her.  
  
She spoke to him, hoping he’d answer, hoping for some present contact to focus on to let her try to imagine the rest in place of what she saw. No response whatever. It was all up to her.  
  
Feeling that any moment she might faint or vomit, she began undressing. Each button in its methodical turn, each fastening undone, each garment removed, folded, and laid aside. She didn’t allow herself the cowardly separation of pajamas or a knee-length sleeping T. This was about flesh.  
  
She stood for nearly five minutes at the far side of the bed, waiting to be ready. Finally knowing she’d never be ready. She slipped into bed, thinking _Dawn touched him, held his hand: it’s possible,_ like a mantra. The other, more hysterical mantra was _At least he doesn’t smell._  
  
As a matter of honor, she’d left a light on, and she kept her eyes open. She made herself stroke her fingers slowly down the length of his right arm. Although she was certain he couldn’t hear her, didn’t even know she was there, she whispered, “If you can stand to be this, I can stand to be with this. You said you’d come to me when you could, and you have, and you will. There’s nothing here that’s not to love. It’s all in the learning how. And the wanting to.”  
  
Carefully resting no weight on him, she turned on her side and gathered him close and believed as hard as she could until she slept.  
  
**********  
  
It had all gone away. He wondered where the other had gone who had been with him through it all. It didn’t hurt so much as before but it was lonely.  
  
Water was sometimes and then was not. Like a very slow but steady drip in a desert. On the surface everything dry, gritty, easily blown away. Deeper though, his body sipped and diffused the moisture by tiny slow degrees. Absorbed and used every least molecule until there was no more and halted then as it was. Afterward waited through what felt like an entire season of pitiless drought until the water came again. Never much. Never enough. But always some as he waited for it, too deep in need to yet feel it as thirst, only as an undifferentiated ache that was everywhere, that was waiting.  
  
He was accustomed and resigned and content to have life rationed to him. So when it presented itself and bade him drink in the voice that he knew, the voice that gave permission or withheld it, he changed and bit and fed, rapt in the power and the astonished sweetness of it but releasing when the voice bade him stop. Not nearly enough. He understood that he was to feed from no other, that this was the gift to him and it would be given again in the proper time.  
  
He waited for it to be time.  
  
**********  
  
Dawn knew that any kind of severe submission was traumatic. She’d seen the effects in Michael, seen how long it had taken for him to begin to regain his balance, his sense of self, his initiative. And that had been under the almost constant care of a senior vamp who knew what he was doing and viewed the younger vampire with affection. And that was without the added strain of extreme starvation.  
  
So although everybody else cleared out of the front room when Angel arrived in the twilight, literally turning their backs on the intruder, Dawn stayed quiet by the doorway and watched. And saw the tension of Spike’s blindness sag into ease, and saw how Angel offered his arm for Spike to feed from him and was quiet and gentle with him, stroking his hair, both of them silent until, at a word, Spike quit feeding and slumped back in the big armchair he’d been installed in by Willow’s directions.  
  
Watching, trying to set aside preconceptions and see what was actually there, Dawn knew the two vamps were completely at peace with one another.  
  
She believed Angel would have stayed longer, for Spike’s sake, if Buffy hadn’t made it clear Angel was welcome at Casa Summers strictly on a business-only basis: in and then out as soon as possible.  
  
So when Angel came out, stern and expressionless, rolling his sleeve down over the bite, Dawn got ahead of him and said, “I’d like to understand better. Would you talk to me a little?”  
  
He gave her a glance and kept going. But when Dawn followed, he’d stopped at the stairs, his back to her. Not friendly, but not leaving, either. Dawn put her back against the porch railing. “Nobody here really knows how to take care of a vamp. I’d like to learn.” No response, but still not leaving. “If the problem is fluids, why can’t we give him more?”  
  
“Adhesions. Surfaces healing quick and wrong, healed tight to each other. Have to rehydrate very slowly. Let the adhesions pull away gradually or he’ll lose more to internal bleeding than he can take in. And that doesn’t mean anything to you at all.”  
  
Dawn didn’t react to the contempt and bitterness. She kept everything very calm and on topic. “How long until he can have more?”  
  
“Another two days. Maybe you could tell someone.” (Implication: she was nobody but might serve to carry a message to Somebody, presumably Buffy, who actually had some authority worth his notice.) “Then six twelve ounce glasses of water, two about every eight hours. Gradually. Not all at once. City water in Sunnydale has always been putrid.”  
  
“I can get good water for him. And good blood. Live blood.”  
  
Finally, Angel consented to look around at her. “That would be better. But he won’t feed from anyone but me. No humans.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because I’ve forbidden it.” He was frowning at the side yard now. “There’s a vamp out there.”  
  
“I know. His minion. He’s no danger.”  
  
In angry exasperation, Angel demanded, “Has every vamp in Sunnydale been invited in?”  
  
“He’s not invited. He’s just waiting. When can Spike have more blood? And how much?”  
  
“Another four days. Then, as much as he can take. Water, too. I’ll come each day and feed him until then. If I’m allowed.”  
  
Absolutely volcanic rage but furiously and absolutely controlled. Courtesy as armor. If permission was needed, he’d ask it--to properly care for his childe, now that time for torture was done and apparently utterly put away, except for its effects, by both of them. As the torture had been, this too was a vampire matter, alien and beyond common understanding. Knowing she didn’t understand it, Dawn suspended judgment. She returned Angel’s courtesy and offered herself as ally on the basis of shared concern.  
  
“I’ll see that you’re allowed. Spike needs to be taken care of by someone who knows how.”  
  
“All right.” Not agreement. Just a noise of acknowledgement.  
  
“Let him feed from vamps. When it’s time.”  
  
Another grudged, considering look. “Vamps can’t feed from one another--”  
  
“--unless it’s right after a kill, or the vamps are of the same bloodline, the junior feeding from the senior. Yes, I know. Tell him that’s allowed.”  
  
“Is that minion his get?” Angel demanded incredulously, waving at the yard where Dawn could not see Mike but still knew he was there.  
  
Apparently Angel also knew of Spike’s reluctance and then refusal to turn dinner into a companion.  
  
“Something will be arranged,” Dawn responded with serene vagueness. “And you’ll be able to confirm that it’s done him no harm. How long will it take…for his eyes?”  
  
“It depends. Not less than two weeks, and probably more.”  
  
“Everything else will have healed by then,” Dawn reflected, dismayed. “He’ll be absolutely climbing the walls!”  
  
“He’ll need to train. Get back his strength and coordination. Maybe…something could be arranged with those Potentials he’s been…working with.”  
  
Dawn refused to speculate about what Angel thought Spike had actually been doing with the SITs. “I’m sure it could. If you think of any other way I could help while you’re shut out, I want to. I love Spike. And I try to understand.”  
  
The near-vamp bluntness about his situation startled him: Dawn could tell. She thought it probably had been too long since he’d been around vamps: too long among humans and their self-serving pussyfooting.  
  
“Watch out, child. Somebody might come to the conclusion you’re on the wrong side here.”  
  
“I’m on Spike’s side. That makes everything very simple and usually prevents misunderstandings.”  
  
“Right,” said Angel dubiously. “Good night, then.”  
  
“Good night, Angel.”  
  
When Angel’s big car had pulled away, Dawn went out into the yard to where Mike waited.  
  
“It’s hard to tell,” she reported, “when he’s sleeping and when he’s not. But I don’t think he knows any of us are there yet. Except Angel. He knows when Angel comes. And he’s not afraid of him.”  
  
“No,” Mike agreed, as though that was self-evident.  
  
“Why not, Mike? I see it but I don’t understand it!”  
  
“Well, it’s settled now between them. Where they stand. So no need for anybody to be afraid or mad anymore.”  
  
“Oh.” Dawn tried to get her mind around it. “But Mike, Angel tortured him!”  
  
“There’s a joke,” Mike said, “about a mule and a two-by-four. Don’t remember all of it. But the point is, the two-by-four is to get the mule’s attention. Spike got my whole attention by breaking a good many of my bones and busting my nose. I couldn’t see, the better part of two days, they were swole shut so bad. And knowing if I didn’t submit, he was gonna dust me, no doubt whatever about it. You saw. If they been at odds, Spike and Angel, a hundred years or more, and never settled things between ‘em, might take a good bit to get Spike’s whole attention off all the grudges and quarrels and onto _now_. Vamps heal, Dawn. So we play real rough, a way humans don’t. You got to take that into account. Let me go in, Dawn.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Mike. It’s not up to me. Tomorrow night, a couple of the SITs will bring him out on the porch for awhile. Then--”  
  
“Why not tonight?”  
  
Dawn thought a minute, then admitted, “I don’t know why not. I know how to do tomorrow, I’m not so good at now. I don’t know any reason. Let’s go over to Casa Spike and ask them. I think we could come up with a few volunteers. I think at this point I probably weigh more than he does.”  
  
“Good idea, Dawn. Let’s do that.”  
  
**********  
  
By the time four more days had passed, Spike was still mostly fogged. But there’d been visible improvement: he’d gone from looking like a zombie to looking like a ninety-year-old concentration camp survivor. He was awake more. He could respond to simple questions about his comfort if you spoke really slowly and avoided big words. But energy level was about zero: he seldom moved and never spoke on his own initiative. Lawn ornaments had more animation.  
  
“Doesn’t smoke,” Dawn remarked to Buffy, who was on the point of leaving for work, “doesn’t drink, doesn’t gamble, doesn’t swear, doesn’t chase other women. In short, the perfect boyfriend.”  
  
Buffy rolled her eyes and looked as if she was thinking of several other things Spike didn’t do that she wouldn’t mention. Hustling to his chair where he’d been installed for the day, she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Off now, Spike. Don’t get into too much mischief. Get better.”  
  
She didn’t wait for a response. You could grow several layers of moss waiting for that.  
  
Dawn perched on the overturned bucket by his chair and started reading to him. She’d finished _The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody_ by Will Cuppy; now she was reading from _The (In)Complete Book of Failures,_ a compendium of snippets of egregiously dumb stuff including such items as builders constructing a wall and omitting any way to get their truck out; a vet lighting a pipe while examining a flatulent cow, resulting in second degree methane burns to his face and the cow’s posterior; and selected excerpts from “English As She Is Spoke,” the world’s most incompetent phrase book. Dawn didn’t know if Spike paid the least attention but at least it kept her entertained.  
  
In reserve remained _The Stuffed Owl_ , containing abysmal poetry of the last couple centuries, and Thurber’s _My Life and Hard Times_ , both excellent invalid fodder.  
  
Pretty soon the SITs started drifting in. Each did The Greeting, which consisted of coming over to Spike’s chair, touching his hand for a moment, and saying _Hi_ , so he’d know who was there. Leaving, they’d do the same, except the word would be _Bye_. Occasionally he’d react and startle somebody but mostly he didn’t. They did it anyway because Oracle Willow had delivered the revelation that he preferred people around him but undemandingly, busy with their own interests and pretending he was furniture.  
  
Rona worked crosswords Willow had downloaded and printed out for her. Vi started a Monopoly game, the players flopped down in the middle of the floor. Amanda took up her counted cross-stitch, a picture of a sappy, big-eyed kitty cat with a necklace of daisies. Kim sharpened weapons. JoAnne read a cookbook. Kennedy tried out some new ghastly color of nailpolish on her toes.  
  
After the lunch break, when she resumed reading a selection of really stupid reviews of classic movies, Dawn was startled and delighted to feel Spike’s fingers alighting on her hair like a flock of butterflies. Holding otherwise very still, she lifted an arm, waved frantically from the wrist, and then stabbed the air backward with her thumb until everybody had noticed, all of them grinning like maniacs, shoving one another, doing high-fives, rolling on their backs and kicking, and otherwise displaying unrestrained glee in utter silence. With some difficulty, Dawn found her place and read on.  
  
At first dark, when Angel came to provide the evening feed, he carried in and opened a wheelchair. He motioned Dawn outside to direct in a whisper, “Don’t tell him who brought it.” When Dawn raised her eyebrows and looked a question, Angel frowned uncomfortably. “It would be awkward.” When Dawn’s question didn’t go away, he added, “He was in a wheelchair once. It…wasn’t a good time.”  
  
“He noticed me today,” Dawn reported happily. “That’s good, right?”  
  
“This will be the last time I feed him. I assume there’s blood laid in.”  
  
Figuring that was a question, Dawn nodded. “About what I asked…?”  
  
“You want to explain about that?” Angel asked sternly.  
  
“Nope. Just an idea. Can’t hurt to try.”  
  
“I suppose not. All right. I’ll tell him. After I leave, all the fluids he can take.”  
  
“Right.” Dawn saluted smartly, and Angel gave her a look but also something that might have been a smile if you looked really hard and weren’t too particular.  
  
Dawn had set herself the task of learning how to tease him. She couldn’t yet claim much of a success rate but she was nothing if not persistent.  
  
After Angel went inside again, Dawn went to the yard, where Mike, Amanda, and Kim were playing three-way catch with a luminous Frisbee. Coming toward her, Mike pitched a cigarette, which Dawn found odd--she’d never noticed him smoking before--but not worth remarking on.  
  
Amanda brought and opened one of the plastic lawn chairs, and Dawn sat down.  
  
“You scared?” Mike asked solicitously. “You smell scared.”  
  
“A little,” Dawn admitted. “Not your fault.”  
  
“I’ll be careful. Like I promised.”  
  
Dawn hitched a shoulder. Although they’d discussed it, there were factors involved that nobody knew but Dawn. She figured Mike would find out when he found out.  
  
“We don’t have to,” Mike said. “I’m all fed up good.”  
  
Dawn didn’t try to explain to him why that wouldn’t work. Not as she intended it to, anyway. She just gave him her arm. The next second, he’d gone vamp-faced and bit just above her wrist.  
  
It felt scary and wonderful. As though everything in her had jerked into alignment with that one point of contact and burned there, waves and waves of throbbing pleasure in heartbeat rhythm bursting back through her from that point as her life was drawn away.  
  
Then it stopped. And it hurt that it had stopped. She found herself bursting into tears.  
  
Kneeling in the grass, still vamp-faced, Mike looked dazed and completely rattled, staring at her. After awhile he shed game face and Dawn was able to choke back to gulping sniffles, both of them still staring.  
  
Mike scraped his wrist across his mouth. “Dawn. You should have told me.”  
  
“Well, I didn’t know how it would be, I’ve never done this before, how would I know?” Kim stuffed a wad of tissues at her and Dawn swiped her eyes and blew hard, horribly sorry to have flashed out at Mike like that.  
  
“Good they stopped me,” Mike said very softly. Head bent now, eyes averted.  
  
Kim said, “Don’t think this was such a great idea after all.”  
  
“No,” Dawn burst out, “don’t you see? That’s the power in it. So what if it scared me? So what if it scared you? Big things are scary, that’s how it is!”  
  
“Wouldn’t say precisely scary,” Mike muttered. “Gonna have to talk about this. No use in wasting it, though. This ain’t for me anyway. ‘Manda, soon as Angel’s gone, see to getting Spike out onto the porch.” When Amanda hesitated, looking from him to Dawn in obvious concern and uncertainty, Mike burst out, “Jehosephat, girl, go on! I’ll stand off by the corner, striking distance and then a bunch. Jesus H. Christ!” He sprang to his feet and stormed off, muttering to himself, going where he’d said: clear to the far side of the house.  
  
Kim asked cautiously, “What was that all about?”  
  
Dawn shot back, “It’s spooky and scary and none of your business!”  
  
“I think maybe it is, Dawn. I came _that_ close to having to taser him. If you figure on doing this again and you want me to be minder, I need to know what’s going on.”  
  
Dawn scrubbed at her eyes again and sniffed. “I’m sorry, Kim. It’s just really upsetting. I’ve heard of people paying to have vamps bite them. Now I know why. It’s…very scary.”  
  
“I noticed. And that’s not all I noticed.”  
  
“Well, it’s personal. _Very_ personal, all right?” Dawn clasped her hands in her lap, feeling very dim and let down. “My blood. It’s the same as Buffy’s. Basically, the snack food a vamp dreams about. Slayer blood. Reportedly pretty strong stuff. I wouldn’t know, myself. I figured it wouldn’t take much…to make a difference.”  
  
“I think you should use a mug next time.”  
  
“But then it’s dead. Or dead-er. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ll talk to Mike. I scared him. Or whatever.”  
  
“I think quite a lot of whatever. I’d hate to have to do him over this,” Kim remarked somberly, looking off to the porch as Angel came out and went down the walk to his car.  
  
Dawn couldn’t bear to think about Kim’s remark.  
  
Some SITs brought Spike out onto the porch in the wheelchair. Mike went and stood partway up the steps, one foot higher than the other and his body leaned forward--almost a pose of interrupted attack. He was saying something to Spike but Dawn was too far away to hear what or know if Spike made any response. Going the rest of the way onto the porch, Mike bent down by the chair, offering his arm. No reaction. So Mike opened his own arm and offered it again. That time, Spike latched on and began feeding. After some minutes, Mike appeared to have a certain amount of difficulty getting him to stop.  
  
Mike came back down the steps and crossed to where Dawn was sitting. He looked, well, drained. Exhausted. He said, “I’m gonna go hunt now.” When Dawn looked up wanly, Mike said, “You always smelled real good. Now I know why…. Don’t think anything would have been different if you’d told me. No talk is anything like the thing itself. And I understand. This is because he’s yours. And I’m not. Ain’t for me, it’s for him, and that’s right. That makes the best sense. Next time, I’ll do better. Seems like a fine thing, to be somebody’s. Might think about doing that myself sometime.” His eyes warmed. “Don’t fret, Dawn. No harm done. I just was a bit…startled, is all. You mind if I kiss you on the face?”  
  
Kim tensed, but Dawn said, “That’s OK.”  
  
Mike bent and kissed her very lightly on the cheek. And then hard and sudden on the mouth. When he stood up, he was halfway game-faced, but that faded almost immediately, and he smiled. “Take some of that fine smell with me. Doesn’t cost nobody nothing, nobody’s the poorer for such a thing. ‘Night, Kim. ‘Night, Dawn.”  
  
As they watched Mike head off toward the break in the hedge, Kim whispered, “He kissed you.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And you let him.”  
  
“Guess so.”  
  
“Does that mean he thinks you’re, like, hot?”  
  
“God knows what a vamp thinks.” Dawn touched her burning cheek. And then her lips, that felt numb. “I smell nice. I have tasty blood. I may never leave the house again.”  
  
That was the one and only time the wheelchair was used. The next day, Spike was on his feet, swearing when he bumped into things, and making himself an all-around misery to anybody who came within twenty feet of him. The only mercy was that he tired easily and slept a lot.  
  
**********  
  
_Fucking hell._  
  
He was gonna have to carve Michael and Dawn into tiny collops, the both of them, for what they’d been stupid enough to do. The problem was that he didn’t know how he’d ever wait until they did it again.  
  
Everything made sense. Only it wasn’t any of it sense he liked.  
  
Well, he wasn’t supposed to like it, was he? The new sense was walls he banged into every way he turned. The walls of Angel’s commands and forbiddings, which all were compulsions, no choice left to him whatever. He was under Angel’s hand and Angel’s word now, as he’d never been in the whole of his unlife, and that had been most of the battle between them from the start, that he’d slide off if he could or take his beating if he had to, but he would not submit, which just made Angelus try to beat him down harder, and back and forth and round and round, and it still never settled between them when Angelus disappeared, just was gone. When, Spike had learned long afterward, the cursed soul had been forced upon his Sire and him too ashamed to show his face, no wonder to that.  
  
So now it was settled. That had been the price, and he’d agreed to it, set himself to it, and paid it. And had slowly come back to awareness to find himself duly installed, blind and helpless and useless, back in Casa Summers with nothing he was allowed to touch. Of course the whole house stank of Slayer, he’d even been sleeping in her fucking bed, not that he was yet capable of doing anything much in the usual way, there were still a score of ways he could have brought her off, pleasured her, renewed the connection. He knew she wanted him to--could smell it rolling off her, practically taste it. And not only couldn’t do a thing about it but couldn’t even truly want to. Although he could form the image in his mind, it wouldn’t spark. Would bang into that wall of forbidding and die.  
  
And though the children were constantly around him, he could no more have fed from them or even accepted what they could bring him in a mug than he could have bitten a windowpane and taken nourishment there. Humans and their blood were behind and beyond one of those walls.  
  
They were all safe from him. Everybody on the entire fucking planet was safe from him. Because Angel made do chaste as a eunuch and supped dead blood out of a mug and called it feeding, he figured that the world would be a much better place if everybody did the same. And in this respect--hell: _all_ respects!--Spike’s surrendering his will to Angel meant that Angel’s incredible self-restraint restrained Spike too. Couldn’t truly want anything different, much less actually do it. Couldn’t even voice a forceful objection. That impulse, like all the others contrary to Angel’s requirements and prohibitions, would just hit a wall, fade, and die away.  
  
Who’d have ever thought that the Scourge of Europe would end up as some kind of tight-assed ascetic Puritan who successfully fought off, every fucking day, anything with the least prospect of making him happy? The man didn’t even bloody _drink_ , or hardly.  
  
The only reason Angel hadn’t prohibited what Michael and Dawn had contrived was that it hadn’t occurred to him anybody would be daft enough to voluntarily feed themselves to a vamp so he in turn could let another vamp feed off him. The heavy admixture of cannabinoids, that had to be Michael’s idea. Another little surprise treat, along with the hefty dose of Slayer blood. They were both hiding out, nowhere to be found, that was plain. If there was mercy in the world, not hiding out together because Spike was certain Michael would eat her up in a flash, now that he knew what ran in her veins. Or maybe just keep her as a bloodcow, snack a little from time to time until, inevitably, it was all gone.  
  
Nothing he could do about it, it was broad daylight. He could feel it: the presence and angle of the sun. Yet he couldn’t just leave the problem and hope for the best.  
  
He could make it across the room if he went slow and rested a couple of hours before and after. But the stairs, he knew, might as well have been Everest. He thought of sending one of the children to fetch the witch but instead focused his mind on her and _wanted_ her. _Now_.  
  
He heard her come downstairs and stop in the doorway. She said in a smiling voice, “You yelled?”  
  
“Who’s here besides us? Never mind: anybody who’s not Willow, bugger off.” He heard assorted feet moving, then one set approaching. “Red, they all gone?”  
  
She settled on the weapons chest, moving the phone to make room. “Well…. Yeah, now they are. So what’s up? You’re looking a _lot_ better today, by the way.”  
  
“Hell with me, pay attention here. Dawn’s scarpered because she’s done something she shouldn’t. Something dangerous. An’ she’s hiding out from me ‘cause she knows I’ll call her on it. Well and good. But maybe I’m not the vamp she should be worrying about. Can you find her some way, don’t care how, and send a few of the children to fetch her?”  
  
“I think that can be arranged.” Willow left.  
  
One of the children, Kim, came from the hall to sit where Willow had been. “I know where she is, Spike. I’ll go get her. I know: you’re worried about Mike, and Dawn’s OK, but if you need to know that for yourself, I’ll get her.”  
  
Kim left and other children came back in, Rona and Amanda and…Kennedy and Vi, all girlsmell, bloodsmell, and he tried very hard not to notice or let that affect him, they were past the wall, out of reach, forbidden. And after a time Willow came back, close enough that he knew who she was, saying to him pleasantly, “I gather the problem has resolved itself.”  
  
“Not quite--” Spike broke off because Dawn had just come in the door.  
  
She crossed the room in long swinging strides, saying, “It’s no big deal, Spike, except I was pretty sure Angel would freak. I wasn’t even anywhere around Mike, I _do_ have half a brain, you know. If you wanted it, no need to go into panic mode, all you had to do was ask.”  
  
And she stuck herself in his face, where Mike had set his mark on her, he knew just as clear and plain as sight, and he was tight focused there; and his demon that had been all coiled and furious within him, denied at every turn, exploded beyond his control, wild with jealousy and need, and then nothing.  
  
His mind started working before his body could move. One of the children had tasered him: he could feel the numb-and-prickling aftereffects. And he’d been able to go for Dawn, she was right on the edge of the prohibition, because Angel had ordered him to it in the before that was all so dim to him, but he remembered that, remembered the witch shouting in his mind, and going for her, for Dawn, because he _had_ to, no choice whatever about it, a weapon to another’s will. And his demon had known that, felt the least edge of a chance and taken it, gotten past him. And he’d gone for Dawn.  
  
And he thought, _The sleep of reason breeds monsters._ Again, Blake had known what was what.  
  
It hadn’t been Dawn worried about the wrong vamp. It’d been him.  
  
When he had enough control back, he straightened in the chair. “You there, Bit?”  
  
“Yes.” Her voice sounded shaky. Like she was crying, maybe. Spike hung his head and breathed awhile.  
  
“Did I hurt you.”  
  
“Not really, I just was…surprised.”  
  
“Well, I was surprised, too. That was in me, all the while, and I swear I didn’t know it. Red. Take from my mind what I want. Tell the children. And after that, don’t you come in my mind again.”  
  
“All right, Spike,” Willow said, puzzled. Then she said, “Oh.”  
  
They all went away. And presently they all came back with blood only beginning to die, fragrant and strong. And because he couldn’t so much as will to take it, Dawn came and sat by him on the chair arm and fed it to him a little sip at a time, patting his arm and gentling his demon down that was all locked in on the blood. And they all did that twice more. The next time, something broke and Spike could take the mug in two hands and drink it himself, carefully not dropping it and not choking from having his throat so tight. And then the last time, as well, when the demon had had enough and consented to settle, grumbling at the constraint.  
  
Spike held up the empty cup until somebody took it. “’Manda. You see that everybody knows: nobody never comes within striking distance of a starving vamp. We’re not to be trusted. An’ whoever came in with her taser, good on her. Bit, I’m all fed up now for awhile. You can come back, if you will.”  
  
There had been some of her blood, a seasoning worth all the rest, in each of the filled mugs.  
  
He felt her settle back on the chair arm, leaned warm against his shoulder. Not hard enough or enough weight that he couldn’t keep steady against it.  
  
“Bit, you recall my telling you how I made those fledges. An’ started killing again. Awhile back. Before the First took me. You remember that.”  
  
“Yeah. Spike, don’t be all upset, nobody got hurt--”  
  
“You hush now till I’m done. Bit, that’s how it was. My demon got past me and did what it does. Caught me by surprise, it did. All I knew was I was worried you wouldn’t take enough care with Michael. Never had a thought of that other till it was done.”  
  
He felt her fingers on his face. “You’re not gonna try and do something dumb, are you?”  
  
“As compared to what?” Spike responded, feeling on the one hand emptily destroyed and on the other, full of that really excellent food given freely and in kindness and concern for him. The two of them all tangled up and enough to undo him completely. “Bit, my demon minds me. We generally get on fine. But I’ve put it through sore trials lately an’ we’re not on good terms anymore. And it just got past me before I knew. Till I can see proper again, at least that long, nobody is to come near me except right after I’ve fed. I can’t be answerable. Can’t be trusted. I don’t mean you no harm whatever, but starving, my demon’s not particular. ‘Manda.”  
  
“Yeah, Spike.”  
  
“Think we’re gonna need that roster again, if everybody’s still agreeable to it. Go half and half with the pig’s blood because it’ll have to be more than once a day. And whatever you do, don’t give the least edge of clue about it to Angel. Somebody fetch a glass of water, big glass, and set it here where I can get it. Don’t believe I could manage a pitcher, but I think a glass I could handle all right…. And Bit, you keep what’s yours to yourself hereafter. Done me all manners of good, but that’s not a thing for everyday. I’m so sorry, I don’t have the words to tell you.”  
  
“I know,” said Dawn, her breath warm against his face. Then the touch of a dry little friendly kiss. “Sick people get cranky. You were just cranky.”  
  
“Cranky doesn’t begin to describe. How terrible do I look?”  
  
“Really awful freakin’ terrible. I just about know it’s you. And your roots are starting to show.”  
  
“Yeah. Well. Have to do something about that when I can…. I won’t trust nobody else to be in charge of my demon except me. It won’t mind nobody else. Shove it back, deny it, it just gets sneaky and comes back twice as hard when I’m not looking.”  
  
“Like a fledge. Like Mike was,” Dawn suggested.  
  
“Very like that, yeah. Gonna have to rest here soon, but if you will, I’d like to know how Michael’s been doing.”  
  
They all told him with great enthusiasm until he slept.


	20. Section 6: Into the Light — Demon Relations

When Buffy got home, about 4:00, she was surprised to find the front room empty: no Spike. A passing SIT told her to look in the basement. Laying her bag and car keys on the hall table, Buffy went down the cellar stars and found Dawn, Willow, and Giles in conversation. Spike, looking awful but much better, was sitting in a lawn chair unfolded and placed where his cot used to be. Manacles attached to chains bolted in the wall were fastened around both his forearms. His blindfolded face lifted before the others noticed Buffy’s presence.  
  
“Hullo, love,” he said, and the others looked around. “Got a bit of a problem here.”  
  
“It wasn’t his fault!” Dawn said at once.  
  
Buffy folded her arms. “OK, what’s going on here?”  
  
Spike said, “Rupert, would you do the honors? I’m up to listening but that’s about all.”  
  
“Certainly,” Giles replied. “Buffy, this morning Spike attacked Dawn.”  
  
“But it wasn’t his fault!”  
  
“Now, Bit, you hush,” Spike said. “I did. And might again. Red, tell her about the geas.”  
  
Willow nodded, wringing her hands anxiously. Buffy found it odd but reassuring that the apparent prisoner was the one calling the shots. The sight of the manacles had chilled her heart. Willow explained, “Angel has imposed a whole big set of mostly prohibitions on Spike. Commands. Psychologically, they’re binding--Spike doesn’t have any independent choice about it. If they were magical, which they’re not, they’d be called geases: magically set compulsions. But this isn’t magic, and I know that’s confusing, but it’s easier to think of them that way because they’re not just rules, not just commands. They’re things Spike literally can’t go against or cross. It seems to be pretty much hard wired into the submission process. A vamp thing.”  
  
Buffy demanded, “Does Angel have something against Dawn? In that house, he told Spike to get her: is that still going on, then?”  
  
“Gets complicated here, love,” Spike responded. “Short answer is no: I expect he picked Dawn that first time because he knew it was something I’d never do of my own choice.”  
  
“To be yes,” Willow put in, nodding emphatically. Which to Buffy made no sense whatever.  
  
“Think I’m gonna need to sit down for this,” Buffy commented, and pulled up the dryer chair.  
  
As the four of them explained it and as Buffy understood it, anything Angel wouldn’t do, Spike couldn’t do. Like feed direct from a human. Mostly Willow and Giles explained, Dawn defended, and Spike put in a word now and then, looking wiped out and exhausted the rest of the time.  
  
But he was aware. And back. And of course in trouble again. Normalcy, of a sort, had been restored. Buffy was too full of rejoicing over that to take any problem very seriously. She got up and took both Spike’s manacled hands and kissed his mouth. And then was worried she’d hurt him because he hadn’t responded, hadn’t closed his hands around hers, hadn’t kissed her back.  
  
Spike said quietly, “See, love, that’s another thing Angel wouldn’t do.”  
  
“Gotcha,” Buffy said grimly and sat down again. “I’m really interested now. So with all these great guesses in place, how could you attack Dawn? And why would you want to?”  
  
“These geases,” Giles said, emphasizing the pronunciation, “have been imposed upon Spike. And only indirectly upon his demon.”  
  
“And the demon,” Dawn piped up, “is getting really, really sick of all the restraints. It’s just getting madder and madder. And Spike’s mad about it too, even though he can’t do anything about it. And sometimes, when they’re both mad enough, the demon takes over and does what it pleases, not what Spike wants it to do. Something Angel has forbidden.”  
  
“It got past me,” Spike said in a flat mutter, on almost no breath. “An’ it went for Dawn.”  
  
As though by signal, Dawn picked up a half full glass of water from the floor and helped Spike drink a couple of swallows. Looking around at Buffy, Dawn said, “He’s still starving, mostly. And I was handy, all full of tasty blood. So the demon figured I was brunch. Right, Spike?”  
  
“About. Thanks, Bit.” Spike lifted his face toward Buffy. “If Angel don’t lift these geases, by the time I’ve got my strength back, my demon’s gonna be so fed up with me and so furious at being caged in, choked back, it won’t mind me at all. It’ll be looking for every least chance to get out an’ hurt somebody. My own personal version of Angelus.”  
  
“And the principal difficulty,” Giles commented, “is that to Angel, this is the normal state of things. On no account is the demon to be allowed any freedom. He believes it to be utterly evil, utterly destructive. And for him, it is. But apparently not for Spike. At least until now.”  
  
Willow chipped in, “Because it’s not magical, just personal, I can’t just wave my hand and make the geases go _poof_. And because Spike’s demon is an entity in its own right, an animus, I can’t do much magically to affect it--any more than I could with Angelus. Vamps are pretty magic resistant, like we found out when Dawn was withdrawn and nobody but Spike remembered. So there’s not much I can do. Spike’s demon is still more a chaotic collection of impulses, a repository and conduit of spiritual energies, than an actual personality. But the more it’s repressed, the more it will coalesce in trying to resist and rebel. Needing to be stomped down harder, repressed completely. Fighting back harder. Becoming more coherent. I agree: we’re talking about another Angelus, different only by the differences between Spike’s dominant personality and Angel’s.”  
  
“So what it comes down to,” Buffy formulated slowly, “is convincing Angel that Spike’s demon is one of the good guys.”  
  
Giles said, “Yes, I’m afraid so.” His tone made it clear that, like Buffy, Giles knew that had the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell.  
  
“’Tisn’t good,” Spike contradicted. “’Tisn’t specially evil, neither. It just wants a few basic things, and to be let alone, and if you do that, ‘tisn’t too hard to manage. But if it doesn’t get what it needs and what it wants, and if you’re all the time chaining it up and beating it, then yeah, it’s gonna turn savage. And once that happens, not a whole lot of ways of goin’ back.”  
  
“But wait a minute,” said Dawn, waving both hands energetically. “You couldn’t ask for the blood in a mug, and couldn’t drink it yourself. And then you could, and did. Could we, like, wear a geas out?”  
  
“Can’t talk about that, Bit.”  
  
“Got it. Then I’ll take the parts. Am I right that you couldn’t ask for it?”  
  
Willow said, “Right. He had me take it out of his mind.”  
  
Dawn went on, “And you couldn’t drink it, unless I hand fed you. Or was the cup just too heavy?”  
  
Spike said, “Wasn’t too heavy.”  
  
They were, Buffy thought, like a bunch of people playing obscure charades.  
  
Dawn’s turn again. “But then you _did_ hold the cup and drank for yourself. So something changed. What?”  
  
Spike just shook his head.  
  
Willow asked him, “Do you know? Should I look for it?”  
  
Spike’s face, when he turned toward Willow, was fanged.  
  
“Oops!” Dawn cried. “Time for another feeding. I’ll see to it.” She ran off up the stairs.  
  
Given the discussion, nobody was at ease in the presence of Spike’s demon.  
  
Giles said, “Well, we seem to have arrived at an understanding of the problem. I think we’ve tired Spike quite enough for one day.”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll try to look into….” Willow broke off, staring at Spike, who quite calmly had reached across, held a manacle, and slipped his arm and skeletal hand right out of it. Before he could free the other arm, both Giles and Willow were headed for the stairs.  
  
Buffy had never given Spike’s demon much thought. He’d seldom spoken to her of it. But the current description had made her think of an animal--a big cat, maybe: reasonably good-natured if well cared for but capable of being savage and malevolent if mistreated. Feeble now and angry, but getting stronger by the day, practically by the hour. And she found she wasn’t in the least afraid of it.  
  
Again, she took both Spike’s hands in hers. While Giles and Willow fled up the stairs, Buffy said fondly, “Hey. Dawn’s getting your food. Nobody’s mad at you.”  
  
Spike leaned forward. His cool cheek was against her arm. His fangs were a couple of inches from her skin. His head turned slightly. Without the blindfold, he would have been looking at her.  
  
It was a question, and she knew what the question was. She even knew what the answer had to be.  
  
“It’s OK. Go ahead.” She thought, _If Angel can do it, so can I._  
  
But the bite she expected didn’t come. Only breath, fast and effortful, against the skin of her forearm. “Save that,” Spike said. “For sometime.”  
  
It wasn’t at all the occasion she might have imagined. But it was true and it was time. Buffy released his hands to clasp him around his frail, stubborn shoulders. “I love you. And we’re gonna be all right. Lousy timing, huh?”  
  
He was shaking, shuddering. Trying to force past the prohibitions that wouldn’t let him do what he wanted.  
  
Buffy held him carefully tighter. “It’s OK. I know…. No more manacles. I’ll see that nobody gets hurt. And I understand: you can’t ask, can’t take. But you can accept. That can be arranged. I’m not letting go of you. Get stronger. I want to see your eyes.”  
  
Dawn came trotting down the stairs with the first mug. Buffy took it and helped Spike drink, freeing Dawn to go back for more.  
  
Between sips, Spike said hoarsely, “Wish I could tell you--”  
  
“I know,” Buffy said gently, smiling. “Sometime.”  
  
“Again. What you said.”  
  
“About sometime?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“About loving you?”  
  
“Yeah. That.”  
  
“I love you. Buffy hearts Spike. Anyway you come. Anyway at all. Gonna make your demon so happy, it’ll just lie down and purr. You won’t have to ask or take. I know pretty well what you like. All you’ll need to do is stay awake enough to enjoy it.”  
  
“Again.”  
  
**********  
  
Only Dawn had all the pieces and therefore saw it all. But the more she thought about it, the more she knew it shouldn’t come from her but from Giles and the Scoobys, who’d known Angel the longest. Who had history with him--some good, some really hideous.  
  
The last piece was about the dream visions, like the one about the pendant, and that had come out only today, from Giles of all people, down in the basement. And Spike had added the one nudge that set that piece as a capstone, holding all the others together: his idea about why such dreams were coming to him at all. “On account of it was Dru who turned me.” The idea of inheritance through the blood.  
  
So in the meeting before the meeting in the front room, that evening, Dawn laid it all out for them with the clarity only an outsider, kindly disposed toward them all, could bring to bear. She ended tartly, “And if you ever took the trouble just to talk to each other once in awhile, you wouldn’t need me to point out the obvious.”  
  
Giles said, “Yes, quite.”  
  
And Buffy, holding Spike asleep on the couch, said quietly, “Poor Angel.”  
  
“The hell with ‘poor Angel,’” Xander snapped. “Poor Jenny, and poor you, and poor us, and poor everybody else whose life that bastard ever touched.”  
  
“I’ll get the _materia_ ,” Willow said, and went off upstairs.  
  
Anya, surprisingly, said nothing. And Spike was asleep. Which was all of them accounted for.  
  
Dawn got on the phone to Casa Spike and Amanda, to set up what would be needed there.  
  
When Angel arrived for the meeting, they were all waiting. Having gone to the door to greet him, Dawn steered him to the big armchair in the corner, that was mostly Spike’s, and perched on the weapons chest beside it. Lowering himself into the seat, Angel was frowning at Buffy and Spike on the couch: obviously not one of his favorite sights in the world.  
  
Before Angel could make any comment, Buffy put an arm--protectively, possessively--around Spike, lying with his head pillowed on her lap. “He’s where I want him. And where he belongs.”  
  
“No,” said Angel, starting to rise again.  
  
“He’s mine, Angel. I claimed him first. And I claim him now. Nobody’s permission signifies except his, and mine.”  
  
“Hear, hear,” said Giles, drawing Angel’s incredulous glance.  
  
“I assume you’ve noticed,” Angel said to Giles coldly, “he’s a vampire.”  
  
“That had come to my attention, yes. Apparently Buffy likes vampires. And the Slayer apparently requires a vampire as consort. This Slayer. This vampire. I’ve resigned myself to it, over time.” Giles composedly drank tea.  
  
They all looked at Angel. And he looked back, taking in the plain fact of their unanimity. After awhile, fixing on what he figured was the weakest link, Angel said, “Xander.”  
  
“Oh, I don’t like any of you fangboys,” Xander responded. “But arguing hasn’t gotten me anyplace except the doghouse. And people can be really peculiar in their choices about who to love.” He looked wistfully at Anya, indicating they still hadn’t officially made up and had probably had an argument about this, going by Anya’s very thin, very tight lips at the moment. “And very stubborn with friends who insist on giving them good advice they don’t want to hear and aren’t gonna take. Spike hasn’t killed a single person I like and hasn’t threatened to murder me in several weeks. By me, that’s good enough. So I’m with the program. What Buffy wants, Buffy gets.”  
  
“Love,” Angel repeated, starting straight at Buffy.  
  
“Yeah.” Buffy bent and kissed Spike’s cheek, then looked up at Angel again. “I guess so. Finally figured it out. Thanks for helping me.” She gave Angel a small and rather tremulous smile. “Anybody who’d go through what he’s gone through for me, well, you got to love that. And any two people it takes practically an act of God to keep apart, I guess they’re supposed to be together.”  
  
“Spike!” Angel was on his feet and shouting. Spike came abruptly awake. Sitting up, he turned his head blindly, trying to figure what was wrong. Angel left him in no doubt: “Get away from her. _Now!_ ”  
  
Spike obeyed. Because he had to. He wavered upright, holding to the end of the couch, and turned there, facing Angel. Waiting for the next command.  
  
Buffy hadn’t tried to hang onto him because that would have only made it harder for him. She hadn’t moved her eyes from Angel. “Is it just jealousy? I could understand it. But really, I thought better of you than that.”  
  
“He’s…a pollution. A desecration. If you’ve all gone insane here, if I have to draw the line, then I will. Do you know what he’s _done?_ ”  
  
“Not all of it, Peaches,” Spike remarked in a sardonic drawl. “Could give them chapter and verse about some of what we’ve got up to, over the years. Last week or so, even. Don’t think you’d like it much.”  
  
“Shut up!”  
  
Spike obediently offered no further details. His wavering became a sway he tried to brace against. In another minute, he was going down. Dawn went to him fast and helped him sit on the floor, leaned against the side of the couch. She was still under Angel’s radar: he didn’t forbid Spike to accept her help.  
  
Willow said fiercely, “He deserves better from you than this. He made it through the Supplice d’Allégance. He put himself through hell to make things right with you. If you take away his choices, then you have a responsibility toward him!”  
  
Buffy demanded, “Is it the fact that it’s Spike? Or is it the fact that he’s a vampire? That he has a demon inside him?”  
  
Angel said, “That should be reason enough. You of all people should know, Buffy, how cruel such a demon can be!”  
  
Setting down his teacup, Giles said, “Ah, but Spike’s demon is a different demon. I believe both Willow and I have mentioned he’s been having visionary dreams, of late. As an inheritance of sorts from Drusilla, it would seem. Quite accurate ones, too. As concerning the pendant, the Eye of Ra, for example.” He gestured, and Anya poked in her bag and drew it out: a medallion of silver metal with a clear jewel inset.  
  
Anya commented, “The chain’s not original. But that shouldn’t make any effective difference.”  
  
Willow asked Anya, “The dealer in Alexandria?”  
  
“E-Bay,” Anya replied. “Sorry, I outbid you. At least I think it was you.”  
  
“Then you overpaid. But Yea, us! anyway.”  
  
Xander repeated incredulously, “The _Eye of Ra?”_  
  
Anya shrugged. “Even Steven Spielberg gets things right occasionally, even if it was the wrong artifact. The name’s been banging around for centuries. Just applied to the wrong object.” She slid the medallion back into her bag.  
  
Giles commented, “The available sources are unclear about the exact nature and use of the object. And our researchers are simply superior to Mr. Spielberg’s. We have a bit more at stake. Now, if we may return to the matter at hand. Spike’s finding himself gifted, or afflicted, with prescient dreams, he attributes to the fact that it was Drusilla who turned him. Is this not correct, Spike?” He looked at Spike, who naturally said nothing, and then in sharp annoyance at Angel. “Angel, for heaven’s sake, don’t be petty. Please allow Spike to confirm my summary.”  
  
Scowling, Angel consented to sit down again and lift his forbidding that prevented Spike from saying anything.  
  
Spike’s contribution was a nod, which hardly seemed worth all the trouble. But it was one geas lifted. Dawn approved.  
  
Giles continued, “That suggests something heretofore unsuspected concerning vampires: that the actual inhabiting demon, the same demon, is transferred in the initial transfer of blood; and that the demon in question has been affected by its previous host. Drusilla’s powers predated the demon. And to some degree, Spike has demonstrably inherited them, having shown no abilities along those lines before his turning.”  
  
“So?” said Angel. “Dru is a monster. We’re all monsters. That’s why a Slayer is needed. Why she’s called. And why her only rightful business with us is conducted with a stake!”  
  
“Ah, but now we begin to approach the point,” said Giles, and gestured at Dawn.  
  
Dawn hopped up and went to the phone on the weapons chest. Dialing Casa Spike, she waited three rings and then hung up. Returning to sit by Spike, she and Willow passed each other. Willow sat on the weapons chest, showing Angel a map with two fiery red dots a little distance apart. After Angel had a moment to look at it, Willow pulled out a capped X-acto knife and a tissue out of her pocket.  
  
She asked, “I need a little blood, Angel. For the demonstration.”  
  
“Why.”  
  
Giles said, “It’s something you need to know, Angel. No trickery. I give you my word.”  
  
Angel considered a moment, then uncapped the knife and pressed the blade into his palm below the thumb. Willow blotted the blood with the tissue.  
  
Willow said, “All right, time to reconvene outside.”  
  
Giles took his teacup, Willow collected some more equipment on a tray, and everybody started filing out onto the front porch, Angel trailing along nearly last, except for Dawn helping Spike.  
  
Going out, Spike asked her, “You got your taser, Bit?”  
  
“Yeah. Not gonna use it.”  
  
“You seen him, since?”  
  
“No. It will be all right.”  
  
“He comes at you, you use it.”  
  
Dawn shook her head. “That would spoil the demonstration.”  
  
“Hell with the demonstration. You look out for yourself.”  
  
“Shut up, Spike,” Dawn directed gently, guiding him to a seat on the steps with the end-post of the porch rail to lean against.  
  
She left him there because the demonstration was her part. And Willow’s too, of course. But mostly hers.  
  
Mike, Amanda, and Kim were coming from the break in the hedge, from Casa Spike. The SITs stopped at the corner of the house, letting Mike come on alone. He flicked a glance at everybody watching from the porch, then ignored them and continued to where Dawn was waiting.  
  
“Hi, Mike.”  
  
“Hi, Dawn. What’s this about, then?”  
  
Dawn took his arm and turned with him to face the porch. “Everybody, this is Mike. Spike’s minion, at the moment. Mike, has anybody told you what to do or not do here?”  
  
“Nobody’s told me nothing whatever, Dawn. You know that.”  
  
“Well, this is a kind of a test, but it’s not your test. I just want to show something. And you just do what you think is best, all right?”  
  
“All right.”  
  
“Show me your demon, please, Mike.”  
  
Mike gave the porch another quick glance, maybe looking to Spike for instructions, but of course didn’t get any. He looked at Dawn again, checking that she meant it. Apparently deciding that she did, he went to game face, with a subtle change of balance as other, less obvious things changed within him.  
  
“Mike, do you want to hurt me?” Dawn asked. “Just say what’s so.”  
  
“Not this minute, no.”  
  
“Are we friends, Mike?”  
  
“I surely hope so.”  
  
“You know what my blood tastes like, don’t you.” Mike nodded slowly. Dawn asked, “Would you like more of it? Would you like it all?”  
  
Mike backed a step and changed to a wary balance. “You saying I should? Or you just asking?”  
  
“Asking.”  
  
Mike considered. “Well, that ain’t for me. And it’s not for me to say. And not all, no way to that.”  
  
“Why? Why not all?”  
  
“You know why.”  
  
“Tell me anyway. Please, Mike.”  
  
“’Cause then you’d be dead. Gone forever. And I’d feel real bad about that. No Dawn, never no more. And Spike, he’d do me for sure, was I to do that. And he’d be sad always, missing you. You recall. He said. What’s this all about, Dawn? I don’t like talking about this.”  
  
Walking to the porch, taking the uncapped knife Willow handed her, Dawn asked, “Do you have a soul, Mike?”  
  
“Not that I know of. Now Dawn, don’t you do that--” Mike turned his head hard away, a full-body wince, as Dawn cut a small thin line across where he’d bitten her before: his mark. “Shouldn’t hurt yourself like that.”  
  
“This time, it’s for you,” Dawn said. “For a taste. To show something.”  
  
“Be a pity to waste it,” Mike reflected, and then, vampire fast, he was right beside her and bent his head to her arm. He licked the cut once: sealing it. He released her arm, looking straight down into her eyes. “That what you wanted? To see if I could stop? Well, I can. But don’t you ask me like that twice. Don’t like to be played with.”  
  
Dawn wanted to tell him it wasn’t a game, he wasn’t being played with. But not yet. “Mike, are you mad at me?”  
  
“Yeah, a little.”  
  
“Do you want to hurt me now? With the taste of my blood in your mouth?”  
  
Mike shook his head, shook himself. Shook off game face, frowning down at her with wide, dark eyes. “Maybe like to rattle your bones up a little, thinking it’s a good idea to tease a vamp. But then I never knew you to be a tease before. So I expect I’ll wait until you tell me.”  
  
From the port, Willow said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you--Angelus.”  
  
Even louder, Angel said, “No.”  
  
“He is, though,” Willow shot right back. “Or his demon is, anyway. The same demon, Angel!”  
  
“No!”  
  
Mike muttered to Dawn, “Spike’s there, everybody all around him. OK if I take a try at him now?”  
  
Knowing it was Angel Mike was itching to take a try at, Dawn said, “Let them do it. He has to listen to them. Because of the soul.”  
  
“Glad I ain’t got one, then. Wouldn’t want to have to put up with that. You gonna tell me what this was for?”  
  
“To give Angel a lesson in demonology. To show him all demons aren’t monsters. That sometimes they can choose not to be.”  
  
Dawn looked up and found Mike regarding her very seriously. “I’m a monster, Dawn. It don’t do to forget it.”  
  
“But not all the time. And I don’t forget it. But we’re friends, and you have a choice. And neither you nor your demon wants me dead.”  
  
“That’s true. Also true I’m not hungry right now, neither. Don’t you figure I’m some tame pet you got here.”  
  
Dawn smiled, realizing that like Spike, Mike was proud of being a vampire and the demonstration of his forbearance, right out in front of everybody, had come dangerously close to injuring his pride.  
  
She told him, “I’ll never ask you where you hunt. Or how.”  
  
“Best that way.” Mike looked critically up at the porch. “Looks like they’ll be at that awhile. Could play Frisbee.”  
  
“Good idea. Let’s do that.”  
  
**********  
  
Spike listened some of the time while they bludgeoned Angel with it: came at him from all sides, beating down all his denials and arguments. That Michael was Angel’s get, made during that turn Spike had taken in the wheelchair and Angel had taken as Angelus on account of the curse, and Buffy, provable by the two new dots on the map set off by the dab of Angel’s blood. That was the connection, made plain on the map: Angel’s blood was Michael’s, no difference. Therefore Michael’s demon, that he could control, was the same animus as Angel’s demon, that was the cruelest creature ever to slash a throat. Leading to the conclusion that Angelus was finally what Angel had made of him: by renouncing the demon, by denying it, by a century of hating and punishing and forbidding what already had been pretty savage to begin with. A souled wasted century of eating rats, when he could catch them, and bumming around in alleys, or so the tale went. Even worse than pigs’ blood. Spike knew, having eaten a few rats in his time in the school basement. Rats would do, when there was nothing else. There always were rats.  
  
Which made Spike realize he was hungry again, and that could become a problem. But before it was, Kim had come out with a mug he couldn’t take. And she knew enough to square off against Angel, still arguing with the Scoobys, and demand, “Is it OK if I give him this?”  
  
“It’s human,” Angel said flatly.  
  
“Yeah, partly. So? Does he have your kind permission to drink his food?”  
  
“All right,” Angel said in a resigned, disgusted _what does it matter_ voice.  
  
And that single prohibition was lifted. All of it. Spike was free to go to game face and take Kim, that brave little fire-plug of a girl with his mark already on her, bent close to hand the cup to him, and he almost wanted to because he was starving and just to prove he could. But he didn’t have to, which he figured was pretty much the point at the moment. He drank the blood in about three swallows and passed the mug back for more. Kim was a fine brave child, they all were, and Spike very seldom wanted to do them any harm and even then didn’t. Because it was his choice to make, each time. And except in extremity, Spike’s demon minded pretty well, most of the time.  
  
Angel hated his demon. Which was something Spike had known all along. Never in a way to gain any leverage from it, though. So he supposed this whole production might be worth doing if it got the prohibitions lifted, made Angel agree that doing to Spike’s demon what he’d done to his own might not be all that great an idea.  
  
It was Angel who’d corrupted his demon, not the other way around. Most of the meanness and the cruelty had belonged to whatever man Angel had been before Darla had turned him. The demon had just let it out, let it free, given it power. And then taken all of the blame and a good part of the punishment.  
  
Whether the Scoobys had thought it out that far, or whether Angel ever would admit to it, wasn’t Spike’s concern. Let the Watcher and the witch and the Slayer see to arguing Angel into lifting the geases. Spike, once he’d fed, was too tired to care much or pay any attention.  
  
When Spike woke it was much later. Nobody was left on the porch except himself and Angel. It was all quiet, everywhere around, except for crickets and the shrill, small cries of nighthawks hunting insects over the streetlights.  
  
Spike straightened, feeling himself stronger, maybe even a bit clearer in his head. After each feed and each rest, it was a little better. He got out a cigarette and lit it.  
  
“So how did that all go?” he asked after awhile.  
  
“Do whatever the hell you please.”  
  
Spike thought of a couple of things he might have said and kept them to himself. All the geases, lifted. So that was all right, then.  
  
“How are the eyes coming?” Angel asked presently in a slightly less surly tone.  
  
“Slowly. Be awhile yet.”  
  
“So what was it all for, Will? The damn supplice, and all of it? Was it all some kind of a damn game you and the Scoobys cooked up--”  
  
“Didn’t lose my eyes for a game. You know what it was. What you always wanted: for me to admit you were stronger, and my sire. Even though it was Dru who turned me. For me to submit. So you got it. You have the power to forbid and command. That still stands. Regardless of all this….” Spike waved vaguely, meaning the whole raft of arguments they’d all assembled to hammer at Angel with, to make him let go. “I’m here because I wanted to be here. Because I thought I could be some use to the Slayer. And you’re here, the same. An’ you call it, and this time, I’ll do it. Soon as I can. Soon as I’m healed. What the fuck, Angel. We’re still what we were. Just a bit clearer about what that is, is all. Without a century of grudges to get in the way.”  
  
“Without Dru,” said Angel.  
  
“Yeah. And that, too. How’s she doing, by the way?”  
  
“Up in Washington state, the last I heard. At least the massacres sound like Dru…. Darla’s gone.”  
  
“Yeah. Heard about that. But not how.”  
  
“It was strange,” Angel said in a quiet, distant voice. “A couple of months back. She dusted herself, Will. So…so her child could be born. In an alley. All our important transactions seem to take place in alleys….”  
  
Spike thought for awhile, because Angel was never one to come at a thing straight on. Always make you guess for it, reach for it. And then, half the time, slam you down for guessing or for asking, either one. But maybe they weren’t gonna do that anymore. Cautiously neutral, Spike said, “Unusual for a vamp to have a child.”  
  
“Even more unusual for two. My child, Will. My son. Connor. It was prophesied. He’s gone now. You remember Holtz?”  
  
“Certain sure. Right bastard, that one.”  
  
“Took him. Took Connor. Into Quar’toth. No way to get to him. Get him back. So when Buffy called, I figured I had nothing better to do.”  
  
Spike let that alone for now. Thinking about Quar’toth, the doorless dimension. And about Dawn, who maybe knew everything there was to know about doors. Or, if she didn’t, maybe could find out. He wouldn’t say anything until he was sure. Didn’t want Angel going after Dawn, the way he sometimes did.  
  
“Holtz,” Spike said eventually. “He’d be what: hundred and sixty some? Lively, for that age, sounds like. Or did he get himself turned?” Given Holtz’s rabid hatred of vampires in general and Angelus in particular, Spike considered that highly unlikely.  
  
“No, he jumped through time, some way. I _do_ hate magic!”  
  
“Not too fond of it myself. But I figure it’ll have to be that, if we’re to close the Hellmouth. If the witch finds a way. Sounds like they got the pendent. The one I saw….”  
  
“Yeah. How does that come into it?”  
  
“Not a clue. I expect she’ll find out. Or I will. Been getting some heavy hints that’s to be mine. All bright, everywhere. Dreamed that a few times now.”  
  
“The hell you did.”  
  
Spike shrugged. “Next thing, I expect the stars will start talking to me. But not so far.”  
  
“You really believe that? That you caught visions from Dru?”  
  
Again, Spike shrugged. “Dunno where else they’d have come from. Writing wretched bad poetry to whatever bint wouldn’t have me wouldn’t account for it. Which is about my only claim, along those lines.”  
  
That was awkward, because it brought up Buffy by implication. It produced a silence long enough that Spike pitched the butt of the cigarette into the yard.  
  
Angel asked, “What do you intend to tell Buffy. About private matters. Between us.”  
  
Spike smiled quietly. “Don’t worry, Peaches. Believe it or not, when Buffy and I are together, your name hardly ever comes up. She’s not real interested in ancient history and I wouldn’t want to bore her.”  
  
Angel considered that and apparently was satisfied because he asked, “You need help getting back inside?”  
  
“I can manage that far. Be awhile before I can take on the stairs, though.”  
  
Let Angel take whatever satisfaction he could from the implications of that. As in the wheelchair, so with the blindness: Spike had some discretion about what fights he picked and which he let alone for a better time. Especially fights he’d already won.  
  
Angel said heavily, “All right. Good night, then.”  
  
“’Night.”  
  
When the sounds of Angel’s departing car had completely gone, Spike stood up and checked the angle of the step to know the direction of the door. He found the latch and let himself in. He’d figured to go to the chair in the front room but stopped, hearing feet descending the stairs. He smiled because it was Buffy.  
  
“Won’t be much good to you, love. Might as well leave me to the chair.”  
  
She came and kissed him. “I can be all kinds of good to you, even if all we do is sleep. Unless you’d rather.”  
  
“Not hardly.”  
  
“Come on, then.”  
  
Slowly, and with some difficulty, they went up the stairs together.


	21. Section 6: Into the Light — Slights, Sights, and the Fate of Cleveland

Hearing the approach of the motorbike, Spike rolled out of bed, dressed, and was downstairs by the time the tone changed to quieter idling. The bike’s noise, the calls of wakening birds, and the beginning stir of traffic on more traveled streets provided a complete and accustomed soundscape in which Spike oriented himself, going down the porch steps and across the front yard.  
  
“Morning, Michael.”  
  
“Morning, Spike.”  
  
As Spike mounted pillion, Michael let the bike pull out.  
  
Fifteen minutes later, retrieving the hidden key let them into the back annex of the Magic Box. Spike turned his head, noting Angel’s presence off to his right, at the street side of the training room. Probably doing those infinitely slow moves of his: about as stirring as watching a glacier melt. Moves you could probably do in your average sized closet. Spike didn’t know why Angel bothered leaving his hotel, unless for some reason he wanted to watch Spike’s progress in the unarmed drills.  
  
The scent of coffee meant Anya was also up early. She liked to keep an eye on the merchandise when anybody else was here, no matter who.  
  
While Spike sat on the back bench to pull off his boots, Mike dragged all the pads into a pile near the outside door. They met, both barefoot, out in the middle of the floor. Mike tapped Spike’s shoulder, and they began.  
  
It was a little like wrestling and a little like the tether fighting once popular in France. Pretty much continuous contact, a medley of blows, holds, and throws, going at it full speed, full force, but minimal footwork. No need for any warm-up, no need to hold back.  
  
Spike had tried training with a few of the SITs but had found it too difficult to keep from hurting them because they weren’t consistent in their moves and sometimes leaned in closer than they should. Blows that should have been quick, pulled jabs instead connected solidly and the SIT knocked off her feet, unprepared. And the SITs needed for protection the pads whose edges were a tripping hazard for Spike. Better working out with Mike on the bare floor. Just go at it, all out.  
  
Mike’s fighting style, like Spike’s, was an eclectic hodgepodge of unarmed combat moves and streetfighting. Normally Spike would have thrown in more aerial stuff--backflips, drops, sweeps, flying kicks and the like--but his blindness denied him accuracy, and losing contact put him at a further disadvantage. Regretfully he left the flying flourishes--the little extras that could startle an opponent and make people like Huey think he “fought pretty”--to some other time.  
  
Buffy would have worked out with him, had in fact offered a couple of times, but Spike didn’t want to show her anything less than his best form. Bad enough to have Angel watching, assuming he was.  
  
Thinking about being watched distracted him enough that Mike had him down and into a headlock, bang done. Enough of that then. When Mike let him up, Spike went over to the weight bench and worked there awhile. Didn’t need anybody’s help doing that. He pushed himself mercilessly because he knew what he expected of himself and was still way short of that. Strength decent, maybe, but endurance was terrible and he was still stiff and awkward by his own standards from having to contain motions within a limited range because of the blindness. His measure was the Slayer: her supernatural strength, agility, and skill. Still be awhile, he judged, before he’d be fit to dance with her.  
  
At the first signs of shaking exhaustion he continued a little longer, then quit and rested. Mike brought him a cold quart of bottled water. He drank some of it, then all of it, Didn’t have to feed a dozen times a day now but the water still was good and he went through considerable of that.  
  
The idea of having to pay for water offended him. Being idle and useless and kept on charity offended him. He keenly felt the difference between working, stealing, or extorting/finagling/gambling to provide for his own needs, all of which he considered sensible, and being a dead drag on Buffy’s skint economies. And now there’d be leavegeld for Michael to get together and how was he to do that?  
  
Spike made himself shut down that line of thinking. When he was healing, he always did that: got into cycles of aimless depression and worry. No sense to them. It was worse this time because he wasn’t inclined to drink himself into a blank interval, since that would have rendered him completely helpless; and his confidence in his own ability and resources to deal with any challenge were pretty much at an all-time low. Because he’d submitted. To Angel. Couldn’t claim the _head bloodied but unbowed_ sodding rot anymore. In Angel’s presence, Spike always had an ear halfway cocked. Attending. Waiting for direction. Vaguely anxious for notice and approval that consciously he was indifferent to.  
  
He’d been willingly owned a long while now. Given pieces of himself away freely, without calculation, beginning with Buffy and Dawn. All sorts of people now had a claim on him: Willow, all the SITs, the Watcher, Anya, even that git Harris, some ghosts like Joyce and Tara, and Michael too, of course. All that rested light on him. It was different, acknowledging Angel’s ownership.  
  
Despite all the thinking Spike had done about it before and since, despite intending and accepting it, it made him feel less than he’d been. Less in every way. Made him feel fragile and unsure.  
  
He bestirred himself for a session hitting the large heavy bag and the suspended smaller one, working toward a sustained staccato rhythm, thinking that if he wasn’t anymore the weapon he’d been accustomed to and expected himself to be, he was still sufficient to the mission of closing the Hellmouth. Nothing much signified beyond that.  
  
Mike coming up. And Angel behind him. Spike kept up the rhythm of striking the light bag as though he didn’t notice because he didn’t want to notice.  
  
All grave and approving, Angel said, “Well, you’re beginning to have some meat on those bones,” and Spike’s memory replayed, _Well, you’re almost fit to beat up a nun,_ said in exactly that tone, from other, lesser recoveries, followed by that same swat on the shoulder. He’d expected it and therefore held his balance and his rhythm against it. He wondered if Angel had the same old soundtrack playing counterpoint in his head but not enough to ask.  
  
_We are what we were_. Spike was getting his strength back, enough to prod Angel into reasserting dominance. Same old tune, just new and more guarded words. Meant pretty much the same.  
  
Angel proposed, “Why don’t we do a couple of turns. Test your speed, not go easy on you and wait for you like your boy here.”  
  
Spike reached out and stilled the bag, realizing it was Mike Angel was after. Michael, come all watchful, guarding him. “Michael, go home.”  
  
Mike said, “Don’t want to.”  
  
“That wasn’t a question, and you ain’t got your leavegeld yet, so you mind. Go on home. I’ll be along presently. Michael.”  
  
Michael didn’t respond. The lad thought he knew well enough what was what but still fancied his chances. Didn’t know how jealous Angel was in his ownership. Didn’t know that the restrictions Angel imposed on himself in regard to humans didn’t extend to vamps. Still played rough and pretty much the same as always, in that respect.  
  
Angel commented, “You don’t keep that boy in line. You can’t put him down, so he’s lost respect for you.”  
  
“Michael,” Spike said one last time.  
  
“Not gonna leave you here,” Mike said stubbornly.  
  
So Spike hit him before Angel could. Hit him hard and unexpected, and put him down, and set an elbow in his throat, wrists crossed and hands in neck-breaking position. “Michael, you’re embarrassing me in front of my Sire. Now you get home like I said.”  
  
There were a couple of ways Mike could have broken free, but Spike trusted the lad not to and he didn’t. Maybe Mike understood the attack and maybe he didn’t, but he accepted it anyway. Spike let him up and listened for the sound of the door, that would mean Mike was clear. Then he faced around to Angel.  
  
“If you want to play, I’m here.”  
  
A cuff to the head, hard enough to break Spike’s stance, but just the one, and Angel’s amused, sardonic voice commenting, “I expect more from you, considering all that good girl blood you’re getting. Are you sure you didn’t inherit thrall from Dru, not dreams?”  
  
Spike shrugged. “Can build up strength and get hard on pig blood. Just takes longer.” He expected another smack for that, but probably just got a scowl, which didn’t signify. So he added, “The children and I understand each other well enough.” Which probably was annoying too but not as bad as bringing up the Slayer directly, so Angel let it pass.  
  
“You’re their mascot,” Angel said, turning, moving away. “Pet vamp. Well, I suppose it’s good somebody finally found a use for you.”  
  
So this game was apparently over: no fun without Mike to play the angles, the connections. Not worth the play just for Spike, that he could have at a word. Spike broke stance and went slowly for his boots.  
  
Except at midday, the alley behind the Magic Box received no direct sun so it was simple enough for Spike to locate and lift the storm grate that let him drop into the big sewer pipe below. Stepping up onto a wall cleat let him reach and slide the grate back into place.  
  
Along the route between here and Casa Summers were other grates the sun did shine through. So Spike untied the blindfold and tried out his eyes.  
  
Got general dark blur, so he wasn’t certain if he’d be able to notice the sunfall spaces or not. The first of the exposed grates was a couple of hundred paces on, so he started walking, blinking and squinting, trying to discern any detail that would give him a basis for comparison. Presently he felt there was a vamp up ahead and halted, pulling out the piano wire garrote from his back pocket.  
  
“Michael?”  
  
“Yeah. There’s sun here. Thought you might need…want to steer around it.”  
  
Spike put the garrote away and continued on. He could make out an area of increased warmth but couldn’t see the light at all, which answered that.  
  
They walked on together for awhile. Then Spike decided, “You take the bike for leavegeld.”  
  
“You already gave it to me. You taking it back to give it to me again?”  
  
Spike shook his head. “Forgot. Dunno what else I’d have. I’ll think about it. I’ll think of something. It’s time, Michael.”  
  
“No need of that. And ain’t going anyway, I hope you know that.”  
  
“You should, though. Gonna get real ugly here pretty soon now. You should get gone. Use the damn bike, since it’s yours anyway.”  
  
“I still want in, Spike. That ain’t changed.”  
  
“Different game now. ‘Tisn’t my call now. Never was, actually. An’ you’d just have the whole thing to go through again with Angel, if he didn’t just dust you for lack of the time to sort you proper. According to his notion of proper. Best you stay clear now.”  
  
“Another thing you forgot,” Mike said. “You gave me away to the children. It’s their say now, not yours. So whatever leavegeld I’ve got coming, it’d be from them. I know what I’d ask for.”  
  
“What,” Spike responded with misgivings in his voice.  
  
“What you got: an arrangement. If they go up against Turok-han again, I’d sort of like to see that. Take a hand. With an arrangement, I wouldn’t need to hunt. Dawn don’t like my hunting. She hasn’t said so, but I know.”  
  
“You’re trying to be on too many sides at once. You’ll only get grief from that.”  
  
“No, that’s you,” Mike contradicted composedly. “It’s still real simple for me. Want to dust a whole bunch of Biters. All I can get at, anyway. When that goes down, I’ll be in the middle of it. And whoever is around me there, that’s what side I’m on.”  
  
“Then fine: since you got it all figured out, it’s plain you don’t need me or my advice anymore. So you just go your ways hereafter. I got more than enough to keep track of without bothering about you.”  
  
“Fine,” Mike shot back. “I will, then.”  
  
“Yeah. You do that.”  
  
They walked along in prickly silence until Mike pulled Spike aside, explaining, “Grate.”  
  
Spike made an annoyed face but didn’t say anything.  
  
Presently Mike said, “You think he’ll try to go after Dawn next?”  
  
So he hadn’t fooled the lad at all: Mike had figured out the brush with Angel. Spike answered frankly, “Hell if I know. He can’t hardly go after Buffy, as I expect he’d like to. Warned her, Dawn, but would she listen?”  
  
“No, shouldn’t think so. Be interesting to watch him try, though.”  
  
“I expect. Maybe.”  
  
“You still want me to come by for you, tomorrow morning?”  
  
“No, Michael. That’s done.”  
  
**********  
  
An hour or so before that evening’s Scooby meeting, Spike could distinguish between the extremes of light and dark. He could make out the bare bulb in the basement as a pale white fuzziness, but nothing beyond that. Resuming the blindfold, he went to the top of the stairs and shouted for Dawn. When she came, he led her back down.  
  
“Need to know,” he told her, keenly self-conscious, “how awful this looks. Now don’t you ‘eek’ or be tiresome: just tell me.”  
  
He removed the blindfold and let her see whatever there was to see.  
  
In a very tiny voice, she said, “Eek?”  
  
“Oh.” Spike started doing up the scarf again, but she pushed his hands down and told him to wait. A faucet was turned on for a moment at the far side of the basement. Then Dawn returned and told him to bend down and shut his eyes.  
  
“Some ooky gunk,” she explained, patting at his eyes carefully with a bit of wet cloth, then finishing with the dry end. “That’s moderately presentable.”  
  
He blinked. “What’s it look like?”  
  
“Sort of like cataracts. Your eyes, but hazed over. Can you see anything?”  
  
“See the bulb.” Spike pointed, to prove it.  
  
“And?”  
  
“And the bulb.” Spike pointed again, smiling small when Dawn made a vexed noise at him. He wrapped the scarf around his hand. “Better with or without, you think?”  
  
“With,” Dawn decided judiciously. “Everybody’s used to it so nobody will notice. And better to show less than you actually can do, not more.”  
  
Admiring her wise sneakiness, Spike refolded the scarf and tied it back in place across his eyes, around his head. “Bit, what kind of terms are you on with Lady Gates?”  
  
A silence. Then, brightly, “What size answer do you want: small, medium, or large?”  
  
“Specific. Angel’s got somebody--well, his baby son, actually--kidnapped into Quar’toth. I wondered if there might be a way to get the baby out.”  
  
“Short answer for that: no. Angel’s in communication with the Powers, Spike. If he hasn’t done anything about it, it’s because he’s already asked and been turned down.”  
  
“Do you know that? Or can you know that?” Spike pursued quietly.  
  
“Is this really important? Because I’m really, really not supposed to be talking about this.”  
  
“Just asking what you know, Bit. Not how you know it.”  
  
“If it’s something to do with you, I’ll find out. Either that or get the door slammed in my face. There’s still a connection, if that’s what you mean. What I see, Lady Gates sees. What I know, She knows. As much as She cares to, anyway. If She wants to at all, which I don’t know for certain. But if I were to really annoy Her…really put Her on the spot, the way we did…. I don’t think I’d get away with it twice, Spike. The Powers don’t like being messed with. And what They don’t like, They’re quite capable of grinding into powder or unmaking altogether. It’s always best to stay out of Their notice.”  
  
“That’s what Anya said,” Spike allowed. “But I kind of think they’re messing with me, Bit. Things falling somewhat too neat and convenient to be accident. I don’t necessarily mind, but I like to know where I stand. Whether I’m imagining things or there are other players in the game beyond the ones I know.”  
  
“There’s always other players, Spike. Hanging around the vicinity of an impending apocalypse, that’s always a safe assumption. Imagining what, for instance? What’s too convenient?”  
  
Spike thought about mentioning how that dream vision of the pendant, the amulet, had come so pat, together with the strong conviction it some way was tied to the Hellmouth--produced aptly just before Angel’s arrival. How easy the amulet had been, once sketched and identified, to find and secure. But as he’d said, he actually didn’t much mind the laboriously obvious _Destiny for the Terminally Stupid_ approach so long as it seemed to be tending in the direction he wanted to go anyway. That he was being used, that none of this was for his benefit, was to him a given; the only question was whether the use was toward a purpose he approved.  
  
So long as their plans ran together, he saw no reason to risk jeopardizing Dawn’s position with her chief patron. No, he wouldn’t involve her in it.  
  
So he said instead, “Oh, like how Angel’s Champion get-up doesn’t seem to fit all that well and has this big long zipper in the back,” (His hands measured it out.) “and a tag that says Acme Rentals. And how I don’t get any fancy stuff like that for leavegeld despite all my good service given gratis.”  
  
“You got paid, Spike: you got _me!”_  
  
“Oh, was that the prize? Thought that was just something I’d signed up for on the telly. What d’you think, Bit: should we sign Angel up for one of those free home trials of a floor waxer or really posh exercise equipment? Or those lonely ladies with asthma or something and that real interesting line of patter offering to call a poor bloke at home at his expense and just chat the night away? He could even get those right at the hotel. Add it onto his bill. Bet he’d like that, all so simple and all done on the phone lines.”  
  
Dawn giggled. “You have a wicked, nasty mind. One of the main qualifications for membership in the Me club, of which I am naturally the president. How do we get the number to call?”  
  
“Oh, I have that memorized. Was an internet address, and I know that, too.”  
  
“Wicked and depraved,” declared Dawn admiringly.  
  
“Well, got to earn my way as a child’s pet, here, don’t I?”  
  
“Absofuckinglutely. I’ll get something to write the numbers down. You can do the phone, you can sound reasonably respectable when you want, and I’ll do the internet sign-up when Willow’s off the laptop.”  
  
“Sounds like a plan,” Spike agreed.  
  
**********  
  
For meetings, the armchair had become Angel’s because Spike now sat beside Buffy on the couch. To her left, because he was left-handed and she, right: a fighting arrangement that meant they could easily reach and clear a circle some twelve feet across, plus the length of whatever weapon each wielded, and not get in one another’s way. What Buffy liked about that arrangement, Spike always and reliably to her left, was that it had become automatic. She’d changed her fighting style knowing that arc would always be covered, didn’t need attending to, freeing her to extend her own effective arc several feet farther and to the rear.  
  
She’d also changed her side of the bed. She therefore always nearest the window, where light might attack; he nearest the door, where an intruder might come. Not that she seriously expected her bedroom to be invaded. Just how they were, how they did. Spike always to her left and again solid there. Ivory skin of biceps, against her own arm, comparatively cool and therefore always noticed. Forearms below all smooth and tight over muscle, bones decently clothed, the slight fuzz of hair more easily felt than seen. Strong hands with tendons showing, typically clasped or laid close below his waist in an unconsciously sexy way that both guarded and called attention whenever he gestured, which was pretty much whenever he spoke. Not often: in company he preferred to listen and then maybe comment or discuss afterward. He seldom said much while a wider discussion was going on. Head typically raised and face lifted attentively, turning toward whoever was talking. His face remained more a flavor and specific kinesthetic memories to her than something seen, interrupted as it was by the blindfold and all expressions therefore masked and incomplete for lack of his quick-changing and expressive greyblue eyes.  
  
Buffy missed his eyes and how they always found her first in every gathering; how they’d flick to someone and dismissively away, no further comment needed; the x-ray feeling of their steady attention; how they went wide and stormy in passion. She tried to set aside her awareness that it was Angel who’d taken them from her: Spike had told her emphatically that the ordeal and its tortures were necessary, agreed, and customary things, vamp business that had little to do with her and much to do with their long and troubled history together, he and Angel. Not for her to approve or disapprove or be wildly indignant about. So she set those feelings aside as best she could.  
  
As Spike had recovered, the tension and antagonism between him and Angel had returned and increased in proportion. It was like being able to sense magnetic fields swirling between them in repulsion and in influence. Or the flow of ambient magic Willow said was all about, powerful and unseen. But all civil and carefully indirect on Spike’s part and heavily jovial and occasionally sarcastic on Angel’s. Never erupting into outright hostility anymore. The ordeal had set limits on that, as it was apparently designed to do. They could be in the same room for an hour without raising their voices or coming to blows. Which Buffy supposed was an improvement, though one only doubtfully worth the price.  
  
That level of ruthlessness, she still wouldn’t condone or tolerate no matter what Spike said. Whatever moral authority Angel had held over her in any respect was gone.  
  
Willow was going around the room passing out the newest try at an anti-First charm: two hardened beads of dough or clay with a string threaded through to make a necklace.  
  
Willow was saying, “I know the last one gave some of you headaches, but I’ve been wearing this one all day and no headache, no throwing up, so give it a try, all right?”  
  
She gave Buffy two rather than face the awkwardness of trying to hand Spike anything, which was either thoughtful or chicken, depending on how you looked at it. Buffy put hers on, then tapped Spike’s hand and gave him the other one. He smelled it, made a slight face, and put it on. Buffy lifted a bead and smelled it but couldn’t notice anything worth a grimace.  
  
“The good news,” Willow said, nervously wringing her hands in the middle of the floor, “is that they do seem to work. Xander, I’m gonna try to read you, OK?”  
  
“Fire away,” Xander invited, holding both hands out wide.  
  
Willow made a show of shutting her eyes and squinching up her nose in concentration, then opened her eyes and beamed. “See? Nothing. Or only a mishmash. This one doesn’t block: it scatters. Throws everybody’s thoughts onto two different wavelengths and mixes ‘em all up and lowers the volume, too. So picking out individual thoughts is just about impossible. So I think this one works!”  
  
“The bad news,” prompted Angel, who never lost a topic.  
  
Willow spread her hands. “The other good news is that they’re cheap and real easy to make. Because the bad news is, they’re really, really fragile. The beads are gonna crumble in just ordinary wear and tear. I’m working on a way to harden them. But so far, protection spells won’t layer on top of the thought-Cuisenart-enabling spells. Clear nailpolish doesn’t work either. However, I’ve made up a whole bunch of ‘em, and I’m putting them in a bowl on the hall table. So if you roll on it in your sleep or take a shower or something and they go all crumbly? Just get yourself a fresh one. Because guys, you gotta keep this on 24/7 for it to be much good, see? Without it, your mind’s wide open and you might as well have been using nothing at all.”  
  
Having looked around for comments, Willow took a seat in one of the straight chairs.  
  
Angel hunched his shoulders and leaned forward, taking back his chairman/general authority. “What’s the progress on creating a barrier around the school grounds?”  
  
Willow replied, “Well, the last idea was a flop, sorry. Whatever works for Bringers doesn’t work for vamps, and whatever works for vamps not only doesn’t work for Bringers but makes _our_ vamps have to keep their distance, too.”  
  
Spike commented, “Lots more Biters than Bringers. Don’t worry about ‘em. Just stop the Turok-han, let the Bringers through. We can take care of ‘em from that point on.”  
  
“Stages,” commented Angel, and folded his hands. “That’s something we need to explore more. Split the opposing forces, deal with them separately by different means. How about fire of long but finite duration? No vamp’s going into that. But the Bringers could. And fire doesn’t require much equipment or much to keep it going, once you have it started.”  
  
Giles said, “I would think containment by fire would produce the same problem all our other ideas about containment have: there’s nothing to prevent the First and its forces from simply waiting it out. Whatever they need by way of supplies, they evidently have in sufficiency because the raids into Sunnydale appear to be only by way of nuisance. Not foraging sufficient to provide for the needs of an army the size the First is evidently building according to Buffy’s visions.”  
  
When Giles looked over at her for confirmation, Buffy waggled a hand and then rubbed her eyes in weary discouragement. “Confirmation here, oh yes. Imagine a bathtub full of roaches. Then imagine the roaches are about seven feet tall. That’s the kind of density I’ve been seeing.”  
  
Angel decided, “Deal with the containment as a separate issue. We’ll worry about how to make them want to come out as an issue in its own right. Giles and Xander, the containment’s still yours. Willow?”  
  
“Got it,” said Willow, busily taking notes on a spiral pad.  
  
“Anya,” Angel said, changing focus. “Any luck yet with theories of what the First’s timetable is?”  
  
“Well, given how long it’s been putzing around,” Anya responded, “it certainly doesn’t seem date-related. In the sense of calendars, not in the sense of dating. Other than the Hellmouth getting more Hellmouthy, affecting the residents and the students in particular, dropping property values to record lows, and I’ve decided to remove my investments from Sunnydale entirely, the Chamber of Commerce running around and trying to organize a Richard Wilkins memorial festival for heaven’s sakes, other than that, there’s been next to no interaction between the First and the population. Local population of vamps and other demons is way up, though, according to Willy and my other knowledgeable sources.”  
  
_Knowledgeable sources_ had come to mean those with knowledge of the Hellmouth and its effect as a demon magnet, magic existing, coming apocalypse, yada, yada.  
  
Anya continued, “So I don’t think the First’s timetable has anything to do with what happens in Sunnydale. Or California. Or the United States, and so forth. It apparently doesn’t care if the place is populated or relatively empty when the balloon goes up. It’s making no attempt to keep people here or force them out, either one. As Giles said, the raids seem more of a nuisance it doesn’t bother restraining than any kind of deliberate attack. Flea bites. As far as I can tell, we’re still with the watched pot theory: when the First has the kind of numbers it wants down there, they’ll all come boiling out.”  
  
Finishing a note, Willow added, “What I’ve gathered from the geological, meteorological, and astrophysical networks and databases doesn’t yet suggest any natural occurrence we should be taking account of. No fault activity, volcanic eruption, catastrophic mudslide, tsunamic activity, or near-approach asteroids or meteors to factor in. All normal. Nor do we have the power to call one up, unfortunately. Because I would really, really like to see a crustal implosion and a fuming calderon of magma welling up to suck that whole high school into Dante-Land. Used to fantasize about that in gym, actually. But we don’t have the mojo for that without repercussions on the scale of uplifting the equivalent of Mt. Everest under Cleveland and disrupting the whole of the Great Lakes system, and that would be bad. Very bad to produce consequences on that scale. We’d be punished. So even if we could do that, we wouldn’t want to. Because it would be bad.” Willow fell silent, grimly regarding her hands, the corners of her mouth pulled down tight.  
  
“Willow?” Buffy prompted gently.  
  
“Sometimes I scare me, that’s all,” Willow blurted. “Willow Rosenberg, Destroyer of the Great Lakes. My uncle has a vacation cabin in Michigan. All the birds and the fishes. Woodchucks. Elk. And the Canadians would be soooo pissed!”  
  
Anya commented briskly, “Well, there’s no use angsting about that because we’re not going to do it. And about the vamps. I didn’t mention that they’re coming in, all right, but they’re also leaving. Transient population. Tourists. Have a few beers, buy some souvenirs, eat a couple of locals, and then gone again, pfft. Patrolling is still productive.” Anya looked to Buffy for confirmation.  
  
“About average numbers, yeah.”  
  
Anya went on, “So although current population is at least stable and probably up, there’s no cohesion. No established hunting territories. Strictly catch-as-catch-can, as the phrase goes. Complete anarchy, in other words. Just the way demons like it. Or so I’m told. That would affect recruitment, I’d think. Assuming we’re still planning to try to involve the general demon population in this. Short of putting a FREE FOOD ALL YOU CAN EAT BUFFET sign out by the highway, I can’t think of anything we could offer that would interest them. They have, pardon, no stake here. No reason to risk their unlives for Sunnydale.”  
  
Angel said flatly, “I’ll take care of that. Next thing: what about the amulet?”  
  
Recovering from her brood, Willow said, “Well, it checks out OK. It’s definitely magical and is a multi-use implement. In other words, it’s been used, and could be used again. I can’t really assess its power without trying it out. And I think Spike would object to that.”  
  
“Why?” Spike asked.  
  
“Well, we talked about that, but…maybe I need to explain again, now that you’re…better.” Which was Willow’s awkward way around saying they’d discussed it and either Spike had forgotten or hadn’t been sufficiently compos mentis to take it in.  
  
Spike’s small smile suggested he heard the subtext well enough. “S’pose you do that, then.”  
  
“Maybe you remember me telling about your aura? How it’s gone ginormous,” (Willow spread her arms wide.) “and all colorful and streaky since whatever you and Dawn did, for her to come back?”  
  
“Nope. But I’m listening. From the little I recall, vamps don’t have much by the way of an aura.”  
  
“Well, generally, that’s true. Very low natural energy output, most of it’s supernatural. But not for you. Not anymore. Not that you’re like a freak or anything, didn’t mean that. Just really unusual. It was damped down some while you were hurt and healing, but it’s about back to full spread now. Fills about a third of the room.” Eyes gone wide and blank, Willow gestured, sketching in the air the extent of Spike’s aura. “And since we don’t happen to have a high priest of Amon Ra on hand, they’re pretty scarce on the ground, and haven’t yet made much headway in determining the exact ritual attached to this amulet, it’s really frustrating, then the qualifications for somebody to use this thing is how much energy they can channel. And with that aura, you have everybody else here beat by a waaay margin.”  
  
Another small, tight smile from Spike. “An’ testing it out would involve what, precisely?”  
  
“Your putting it on and going out into the daylight. About noon, ideally.”  
  
“Ahuh. Sort of thought so. Like to take a look at it. Never seen it except in my head.”  
  
Anya pawed in her bag, then lifted a closed fist. Holding the fist before her, she asked, “Willow, is there apt to be a problem if he makes contact? Touches it? Because I don’t want to be here if there is.”  
  
Willow looked at her watch. “At nine o’ clock at night? I think we’re pretty safe on that one at the moment. And incandescent light’s not gonna affect it at all. Go ahead.”  
  
Anya let the amulet fall, dangling from its chain, and rose to hand it to Spike. Holding the chain in one hand, he casually stripped off the blindfold and blinked a few times. Everybody was leaning forward, Buffy included, looking at him: at his eyes.  
  
That they were there at all was a huge improvement. They looked cloudy and vague, as if he wasn’t focusing very well.  
  
“It’s bright,” he remarked, seeming unaware of everybody’s attention. “Shines.” He brought up his other hand to hold the pendant quietly for a moment. “Hums. It’s awake. Is it doing anything?”  
  
Willow said, “No hum detection here. And no shine I can see.” Her eyes going vague again, she added, “But your aura does. Shine, I mean. No color, if you don’t count white as a color. Clear bright white.” She shut her eyes as though what she saw was bright enough to be painful.  
  
“Yes,” said Anya, “I can see it, a little. It’s flared out from…. Spike, I think it’s attached to your soul.”  
  
“Shouldn’t wonder,” Spike responded calmly. “Figured something like that. Wouldn’t be tidy, otherwise.” He let the chain drop onto the amulet and closed his hand around it. “I’ll just keep this now, all right? ‘Cause I figure it’s mine.”  
  
Angel got up and held out a palm. “I’ll take it. You’re not careful enough. Hand it over.”  
  
There was a moment when they were looking at each other. Then Spike let the amulet and chain slide into Angel’s hand, that immediately fisted around it. Angel turned to Willow, who had a hand covering her eyes. “Willow.”  
  
She roused and peeked, then smiled a little. “All better now. It’s gone back to normal. Normal for Spike, anyway, that is.” When Angel kept looking at her, obviously waiting for more information, she told him, “No, it’s not doing anything now. All normal. For you, that is. Ordinary vamp aura. Maybe a little brighter on account of the soul,” she ended diplomatically, which made Buffy think there was probably no effect but Willow didn’t want to say so.  
  
Buffy asked, “Any humming?”  
  
“No,” Angel admitted. “Nothing at all.”  
  
Spike said, “So if somebody can contrive a way for me to get inside the high school in daylight, we might see something interesting.”  
  
“No,” said Willow quickly, “we’d have to figure some way to fireproof you first.”  
  
“Don’t trouble about that,” Spike responded. “It will go how it goes. Think maybe we might close down the Hellmouth an’ no major effect on Cleveland.” He smiled.  
  
Buffy took Spike’s hand and gripped it quite hard. “But you can’t.”  
  
“Maybe not. But I can try.”  
  
Willow burst out, “Why you? I mean I know, but--why would you want to?”  
  
“Because I opened it.”


	22. Section 6: Into the Light — The Law of Unintended Consequences

Dawn was sitting in the yard talking with Kim, Rona, and Mike--just hanging out, in the bright moonlight, not talking about anything in particular--when Willow came through the break in the hedge and waved her to come.  
  
“What?” Dawn asked.  
  
“Spike wants you to sit in.”  
  
“On the Scooby council session?” Dawn was surprised and excited. She was never allowed to even lurk and eavesdrop in the hall. Having her presence requested was unheard of.  
  
Willow dropped a kind of crummy necklace with two beads over Dawn’s head. Her expression suggested that working the string clear of Dawn’s hair was an operation that took serious concentration. When that odd chore was done, Willow just stood.  
  
“OK, am I in trouble or something?” Dawn asked warily.  
  
“No, nothing like that. It’s…” Willow’s serious expression became a tight, grim frown. “I’ll break it down. Spike’s gonna talk about something and he says he only wants to do it once. He wants you there so he doesn’t have to repeat it, or have you hear about it from somebody else and maybe wrong. That’s the immediate situation. The context for this is that he seems to have made up his mind to take that amulet into the Hellmouth in daylight. If he does that, chances are that no matter what else happens, he’s gonna die. He claims he’s responsible for opening the Hellmouth and should therefore be the one to try to close it. That’s what he’s been told to explain. Be prepared for the fact that a number of people in there are having a major Technicolor wiggins. I’m one of them. So: I’ve told you. Come on.”  
  
Dawn gulped and followed.  
  
From the tight, clamped-down silence of everybody in the front room, the wiggins had progressed to the point that nobody was speaking to anybody else and they were now waiting for Dawn to get settled as the signal to start yelling again. Except Angel, sitting in the big chair like a negative picture of Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial, dark instead of floodlit marble. And except Spike, sprawled with his head leaned back on the couch, legs outstretched with crossed ankles, an arm across his eyes--the general effect was somebody laid out on a diagonal plank.  
  
When Willow and Dawn came in, Spike lifted the arm and looked around. No blindfold. Dawn thought that despite appearances, it probably wasn’t his eyes he was identifying her with, so she went straight to him and did The Greeting: touched his hand and said _Hi_.  
  
“Find something to sit yourself on,” Spike said, flipping a hand.  
  
Looking around, Dawn found that Willow had taken the only vacant chair. “I’m fine here,” she responded and dropped down comfortably crosslegged next to his ankles, facing him.  
  
She’d expected the suspended argument to relaunch, but everybody stayed still, waiting for some other signal. Waiting, apparently, for Spike.  
  
Bending at the waist, Spike became a bit more upright than diagonal and folded his hands. That wouldn’t last long, Dawn thought: he was an incorrigible gesturer.  
  
“Well, it was like this, Bit,” Spike began, and Dawn knew at once Willow had been wrong. Dawn wasn’t there to listen--she was there so Spike could say it at all. Only turning it into another story for her made it tolerable. “When the Bringers came and took me that time, I didn’t have much sense of what was goin’ on for, I guess, some while. My demon had come on me like it was doin’ then, an’ I’d just have flashes an’ try to begin to make things out and then lose it all again. Dunno how much time I lost that way. Seemed to me Buffy was talking to me quite a lot, an’ she was real put out with me, what I’d done, what I’d not done, layin’ into me quite harsh…. Thought I was here, for the longest time, not where I really was….”  
  
Sure enough, the hands unfolded. But instead of gesturing, Spike held his left hand out to her. Dawn grabbed it hard in both her own and wasn’t at all surprised to feel it shaking. She’d been anchor for him before when he wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t, and knew that was what he needed her for now.  
  
“And then there were other people round about,” Spike continued, a little quieter, a little more distant. “Some I could see and some just voices. Couldn’t see any too well by then, I’d got hurt some way in one of the lost times. Couldn’t move, neither. Strung up to something, I expect. But I didn’t know that then, it none of it made sense, and the people, they were all telling me what I’d done stupid or wrong, how I was a total waste of the space…. And that went on awhile, by bits and patches, like I said. Pretty much like it’d been before, in the school, before Buffy changed her mind and took me out, made me stay with Harris for awhile.”  
  
Dawn shot a look at Buffy: sitting next to Spike like total strangers on adjoining bus seats. Like Spike was some wino muttering scary nonsense Buffy didn’t want to let on that she heard. But she was listening, because she said, “I didn’t change my mind.”  
  
Spike stopped and sighed. “Well, you weren’t you all the time, pet. But I wasn’t hardly able to distinguish on account of all the voices and the masks. An’ how do you expect me to explain it when I don’t understand to begin with and you’re already telling me how I’m wrong?”  
  
Before Buffy could say anything, Dawn shook his hand a little and prompted, “Spike--topic drift. After the Bringers took you. That’s after the school and Xander’s closet. That’s after you were here.”  
  
“All right,” Spike said, and considered, with his blank face and his near-blind eyes. Brisk again, he continued, “Wonderful thing about pain, it focuses your attention something amazing. It all got real clear when they started hurtin’ me as a regular thing. Whole hours at a time, I’d know I wasn’t here and quite a lot of what I was seeing and hearing wasn’t no way real. Didn’t know what it _was_ , but I was pretty sure of what it _wasn’t._ It was Bringers hurting me, some ways actually pretty silly. Tried to drown me at least one time. Think they’d know you can’t very well drown what don’t need to breathe to begin with. But they done it anyway, and that was real and actually happening because it was so fucking dumb. So after I made out it was Bringers, I had a pretty fair idea what was happening even if I didn’t know why or what it meant. How to sort the masks from the faces. At least some of the time. Know it wasn’t all of it more craziness but somebody actually _there._ Regardless of, of what it…looked like.”  
  
Spike ran out of words, or air, or endurance. When he hung up at that point, it seemed to be a signal for intermission. Willow got up and left. Xander started talking, low, to Anya. Giles rose, getting his flask out of his jacket pocket and unscrewing the cap. Meanwhile passenger Buffy had decided the muttering wino needed support and comforting and thrust her arm behind him, around his back, and butted her forehead against his shoulder, which prevented either of them noticing the flask Giles was trying to offer. So Dawn let go one hand of her two-handed grip to accept the flask and stick it under Spike’s nose. And even at that, it took him a whole minute minimally to notice. Then he disengaged his hand from hers to take and upend the flask. By the time he’d emptied it and was just sitting, holding it, Willow came back with a large glass of water, seeming at a loss what to do with it. Again, Dawn arranged things: took the flask and passed it back to Giles, who didn’t even look annoyed to find it emptied, then accepted the glass from Willow.  
  
“Spike, there’s some water here. Spike?”  
  
“Not just now.”  
  
Dawn set the glass on the floor so she could take his hand again as he reached out to her. The shaking had steadied a little, but Spike’s grip was just short of painful. He blinked hard a few times. “All right, now about the seal. Like the biggest sewer cover in the world. Sections, points to it--”  
  
“Spike,” Buffy told him softly, “we know what the Seal of Danzalthar looks like. You can skip that part.”  
  
“All right,” Spike responded, but predictably stopped again, losing his focus, vaguely frowning. Hunting a different place to catch hold of the account. “All right, then. So the Bringers, they cut me. Never did see it properly. But a circle of symbols--” His pointing finger described a oval that took in his entire torso.  
  
Again, he didn’t really need to describe it: everybody but the newest SITs, Angel, and perhaps Giles had seen those symbols in all their gory, mutilated glory. Some of the scars still hadn’t faded. But this time, nobody interrupted him, so he went on describing how the symbols had been carved into his flesh, again mentioning what a useful aid pain was in clearing the mind and helping to distinguish between illusion and hallucination, on the one hand, and reality on the other, so that he really was quite confident what he described had actually happened.  
  
The scars apparently weren’t enough verification, or he’d forgotten about them and nobody wanted to throw him off again by reminding him. He was way inside his own head and nobody appeared eager to join him there.  
  
Only Angel seemed able to accept Spike’s obviously sincere testimonial to torture and its beneficial effects on the victim with equanimity and unchanged attention. Major Ewww showing everyplace else: wincing, squirming, squinting, grimacing, and assorted face-making that Spike of course didn’t notice.  
  
After the cuts had been made, or maybe before (he wasn’t sure of the exact sequence and got briefly lost trying to work it out), he’d been fastened spread-eagle to a suitably sized wheel-shaped armature. After the cuts, the wheel had been suspended horizontally over the seal, positioned so he could bleed on it conveniently. After he’d bled on it enough, the seal had opened its triangular leaves and the first of the Turok-han, plainly the one Buffy’d had so much trouble with, had emerged: greeted and announced with suitably apocalyptic speechifying by what was obviously the First, whoever it had been pretending to be and showing its captive at the time.  
  
It was very important to Spike to establish that this had happened. It seemed one of three markers he used to contain the experience: that he’d been taken; that his blood had opened the seal and the Hellmouth, permitting the intrusion of the first Turok-han into this dimension; and that Buffy had come for him finally and taken him away. Except for those three points, all the rest was a horrible agonized surreal confusion Dawn knew she couldn’t imagine and could barely stand to hear described, and Spike could only with extreme difficulty bear to remember.  
  
She could understand his wanting to limit his account of it to this single recital.  
  
Spike reached down and Dawn passed him the glass of water. And still the argument hung waiting, suspended like a wave in a Japanese painting.  
  
“So it’s all been set up,” Spike said presently. He sounded like a guy noting with satisfaction the provisions of an insurance policy. “I’m fit to use this amulet, and the amulet is fit to be used for this mission. It lines up right: like five ball in the side pocket.” He mimed doing the shot, striking the ball home. “When I close the Hellmouth, it will all make sense.” He leaned back, shut his eyes, and laid an arm across them.  
  
After a moment, those not resident at Casa Summers stirred and began making preparations to leave. The expected and immanent argument dispersed like fog. Apparently after Spike’s harrowing recital, nobody could find anything to say.  
  
Which left Dawn looking at her sandals that showed her precisely ten human toes, thinking that it would be churlish, selfish, and mean-spirited of her to mention or even think (although it was too late for that) how since her existence on this plane was locked onto a tiny borrowed fraction of his soul, if Spike went, Dawn went.  
  
**********  
  
“He can’t do this!” Buffy exclaimed, thumping the porch.  
  
“Actually, he can,” Anya responded, taking the cool, rational approach to Spike’s manifest insanity. “Assuming Angel will surrender the amulet and the impressive bragging rights of self-immolation. And I imagine he will. After all, how much bragging is Spike apt to do, afterward? And Angel can do the humble benevolent praising-the-fallen-hero thing, which is almost as good, especially when not contrasted with actual bragging.”  
  
Willow said fiercely, “Sense isn’t worth it. Sure, it’s important. Sure, it’s better when what you do means something and you actually know what that meaning is. But it’s not worth going up in flames for, just to make a point!”  
  
Holding her knees and rocking, Dawn muttered, “He was set up. They’ve set him up. She’s set him up. Because he was handy, and willing. Just like last time except this time, he knows. And he’s gonna do it anyway. Because She noticed him: because of me. So She went ahead and decided to use him and then set him up. And is gonna fucking _use_ him up! Fuck up his entire unlife because we annoyed Them. Because he’s crazy and convenient and She doesn’t care!”  
  
Of course nobody paid any attention to what Dawn muttered.  
  
As if by accident the Women’s Chapter of the Spike Is Crazy And This Is Wrong Association found itself convened on the front porch in the bright moonlight. The Men’s Chapter had all piled into Angel’s convertible in furtherance of Giles’ expressed intention of getting Spike as drunk as possible as quickly as possible, and of course Spike hadn’t said no and had let himself be dragged along. Which of course wasn’t going to change anything except temporarily because tomorrow they’d all be sober and Spike would still be crazy and wouldn’t even have the grace to have a hangover because he never did.  
  
Of course the Women’s Chapter hadn’t come up with any better answers, still stuck at the bitching and moaning phase, each from her individual perspective.  
  
“I mean, he just got his eyes back!” Buffy flung her hands. “I haven’t seen his eyes in nearly a month and do you have any idea how important that is? When your main backup and your lover is _blind_ and you have to do all the seeing for both of you? I don’t think he can even see much yet, he was just showing off, and how can he think of doing something like that when he can’t even hardly see?”  
  
Anya remarked, “After all, it’s not as if Angel can use the amulet himself although he’s the designated Champion. He has the soul and all, but it didn’t hum for him. And not a single solitary spark. It’s attached itself to Spike, probably because of the aura and because the soul has worn him out, into stupid altruism. Demons shouldn’t have souls. It only confuses them. With the demon soul, that makes two, and who can listen to two souls at once? It’s just bicker, bicker, bicker. Once you lose sight of the personal profit motive there’s no valid basis for choice and you’re at the mercy of any wind that blows. You have to keep a firm grip on yourself and your own priorities. If you don’t, who are you? Nothing, that’s what. Nobody. Just an empty shell. On fire. Admittedly spectacular but burning up isn’t an answer, it’s only another way of avoiding the question.”  
  
Willow reflected, “Can’t make him forget about it. That’s not allowed. Can’t spell him inside the house, that’s personal freedom too. Goddam personal freedom, personal choice, they ruin everything, nobody sees clearly enough to make really good choices for themselves, just pick the nearest thing that looks like a solution which it almost never is and you can’t tell ‘em, they won’t listen, and you can’t make ‘em because that’s the personal freedom issue again, right there. Even when you see it so plain and they don’t, you can’t just solve it for ‘em by fiat because it’s not allowed. And they won’t accept it anyway because they didn’t get to choose it, as if that was the most important thing. And what the hell use is power if you can’t goddam _do_ anything?”  
  
Dawn thought miserably, _It’s because he opened up to Buffy. And to me. And then opened more when she was gone: to find something to hold onto. Mostly me then but the Scoobys too, trying to hold onto them but they wouldn’t let him, patrolling, trying to continue so it would make sense, but there wasn’t any real satisfaction for him in that or not enough, just killing things isn’t enough. Just letting yourself be used and going through the motions isn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for Buffy, when they brought her back, and she’s the fucking Slayer, after all. So how could it have been enough for him, who’s basically just another vamp, just wants things simple, fucking and feeding and a little fun now and again, the three F’s of vampire existence? No Chosen One, no Sacred Duty, no Champion--just trying to get on with it and have things make some kind of sense. And because he was open, and empty, They latched onto him and used him, even though there was nothing in it for him, nothing that would make sense to a vamp.  
  
And when the Scoobys brought her back, They let ‘em, it was more convenient that way, the genuine article, after all. And then They didn’t need him anymore so They just gave him the push, left him adrift, and he tried to hold onto Buffy again but she wouldn’t really let him, didn’t want the Mission even for herself and wouldn’t share it with him, wouldn’t share anything with him that was real or made sense that a vamp would understand. So he went and got the soul, hoping that would help him make sense of it but it only made everything worse; except by that time, Buffy was desperate enough to let him have a little part of the Mission. Rescued him from the school basement and from the First so he could take some of the weight of the Mission off her. The Slayer versus the incorporeal origin of all the Evil in the world--a major mismatch, after all. No way she could handle that all by herself, so she needed him and admitted it. Giving him the SITs. Patrolling again. Not caring about him, or me, or what we had invested in each other as long as the damn Mission was being seen to and she didn’t have to do it all herself. Because that part of her that might have cared, They’d given that to me, to bind people to me. To make me mean something to them. So they’d goddam protect me. Like he protected me, and They used him for that while Buffy was gone. Because he was convenient and willing and because he’d promised. And loved me because he didn’t have anything else to love and he always has to do that, that’s how he is. And then They took me away and he used everything he’d opened up for, everything he had, wrote my name in poetry into his body even, to get me back. And I let him. Because I loved him and I thought I was helping and didn’t trust anybody else to love him and help him make sense of things.  
  
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should have stayed scattered because now there’s nothing left in Them or in Her that loves him and doesn’t want him hurt. Now his priorities are all screwed up and he’s been so banged around, so hurt, that the Mission is the only thing left, it’s Priority One, Two, Three, and Last. All four sticks. And They’re letting him, They’re pushing him, They’re setting him up to do Their goddam dirty work again promising that it will finally make sense if he’s willing to die for it. They always promise that, and it never does. And it’s all my fault, well not all--Buffy’s fault, too, because the Mission is really hers and maybe she loves him now, so she’s willing to share it with him like everything else. But he’s just a vamp, he’s not made for that although he tries to be. He might even do it, They’re pushing him so and giving him the weapon he needs, and he thinks if he does it Buffy won’t have to, and I’m sure he doesn’t realize I’ll be gone too, and he wanted so badly to take the hurt on himself so it couldn’t get at Buffy and he thinks that’s what he’s doing. What it would mean. And it’s all my fault. Because if he hadn’t come for me, played chicken poker with Lady Gates with me as the stakes, They never would have given him the slightest notice. What’s one vamp more or less to the Powers, for crap sake?_  
  
“Dawn.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
Anya tugged at Dawn’s arm again. “Dawn, I don’t want to be indiscreet or bring up anything awkward. But I really don’t like the present options. Admittedly there are significant commercial advantages to closing the Hellmouth. True, you lose a major tourist attraction, but casual demon traffic is hardly without its downside. Property damage, potential customers killed or eaten, decrease in nighttime foot traffic. Demons don’t even tip particularly well. Not your desirable tourist dollar in the long term. Moreover, if the Hellmouth isn’t shut down and the First wins, there is no long term. The Magic Box and Sunnydale and minimally most of North America is down the toilet.” Anya blew an expressive raspberry by way of illustration. “However, I’m not prepared to accept the price. It’s definitely a very bad bargain for Spike. Prestige, status, achievement, altruism, they’re all intangibles: nothing you can count or take to the bank. And not a whole lot of use when you’re dead. It’s not as if Spike’s the love of my life or anything remotely as melodramatic as that. But when you have sex with a person, even under circumstances of mutual misery, even if it’s a vamp, there’s a connection. Always. You can’t just ignore the prospect of his turning into a flaming pile of ash while doing something stupidly noble. So having given it serious consideration, I’ve decided that I want to call in my favor now. You know: what you promised me, a couple of months ago in return for teleporting you into your basement, when Spike was hurt that time.” Anya regarded Dawn searchingly with a gathering frown. “Surely you can’t have forgotten: an open-ended marker for services rendered, against the Powers That Be, that isn’t something you just forget.”  
  
But the fact was that Dawn had. Forgotten completely. She puffed out her cheeks and said, “Ohboy.” Lady Gates wasn’t going to be pleased. Not pleased at all.  
  
**********  
  
If Spike looked very hard he could see the flame of his lighter. It fascinated him. Couldn’t make out the coal of his cigarette yet but that was coming. When it came time, he’d be able to see the light he’d dreamed about. The light that was everywhere, everything. The light he’d been ducking, fleeing, hiding from for a century and more, yet glancing at from careful angles and distances lately. Looking at it from shaded porches, out of windows. Yearning toward it more than he’d realized until the dreams started coming with him at the center and the light all around like a shoreless ocean. Burning without pain. Just brightness and himself finally part of it.  
  
He wanted that.  
  
Angel pushed the lighter shut. “It’s hot, Will, and you’re drunk. Don’t want to anticipate the event here.”  
  
True. All true. The body of the lighter was hot from keeping the flame so long. Now that he bothered to notice, his fingers did hurt a bit, holding it. Spike pushed the hot lighter into his pocket and licked his singed fingers until they quit hurting. Tried instead to make out the duller coal of the fag, but his eyes wouldn’t do that yet, weren’t ready to take in the smaller illuminations.  
  
Angel’s hand closing on the back of Spike’s neck, the way he knew Spike never had liked, too heavy and too strong from behind, rocking him not quite to the point of shaking him like a dog with a rat (although he did that sometimes too and that was the grip he used for it), saying fondly, “How many fires is it I’ve pulled you out of?”  
  
Obediently Spike tried to think back. “Four. Counting China.”  
  
“Five,” Angel said, pleased at correcting him. “I bet you’re forgetting Amsterdam.”  
  
Spike had counted Amsterdam and the two in London but it wasn’t worth arguing about. Let Angel be right. He was less inclined to hit you when he was right and pleased about it. Or pleased about anything, actually. Though you could never depend on that. Sometimes he hit you because he was pleased and just felt like hitting something and you were handy. So you couldn’t always go by that.  
  
“You want to see something bright,” Angel added, “you take a look at this.” He went off somewhere in the suite, past where Spike could make him out, and pulled open a long, long zipper. _Of his Acme Rental Champion costume_ , Spike thought, grinning. No harm to grin if he didn’t explain. Nobody could know what he was grinning at, could be anything, with Red’s fine new charm around his neck. Head shut entirely. Nobody in there but him. He could be really certain of that. So everything he saw or felt or heard was actually there, actually real. Amazing how good that was to know.  
  
“What is it, Angel?” Giles asked, getting up, coming closer. And that Harris somewhere about the place too but Spike had momentarily lost track of him, couldn’t locate him except for knowing he hadn’t left.  
  
Spike didn’t like being in a place he’d never seen, like Angel’s hotel suite. Didn’t know where the walls were or where the windows were placed where the sun might shine in except it wasn’t anywhere near sunup yet, a long way from that still. Didn’t know how the furniture was aligned or what furniture there was, that might become a weapon at need in his hands or someone else’s, couldn’t reach to grab it quick because he didn’t know where it was.  
  
Actually didn’t like Angel’s suite much at all. Full of faint smells of past, absent people, like vague drifting ghosts, overlaid with strong chemical smells of commercial cleaning agents. He wondered that Angel could stand it and then, thinking back, realized Angel could have spent next to no time here because he’d had to attend to the Supplice d’Allégance. Likely hadn’t slept here more than a daytime or two because he’d been with Spike all that while….  
  
Spike was trying to make out how long ago it’d been since it had ended and couldn’t, he’d lost too many days into the dark, when Giles said his name and wanted his attention, asking, “Can you see this at all?’  
  
“What?”  
  
“What Angel has here. Come look at it. Or--”  
  
While the Watcher tried to fumble around with the way English relied on words like _looking_ and _seeing_ as the only way of knowing about a thing, Angel took the more direct approach. Hauled Spike up (by the scruff of his neck again) off the bed where he’d been sitting, all peaceable and not bothering anybody, dragged him ahead and then crooked a few paces, then grabbed his hand and set it on something that _screamed_.  
  
Spike backed away so hard and fast, the bed caught the back of his knees. He went over backward, spilling his drink and losing his cigarette, and everybody around him dealing with that, Angel cursing and cuffing him, so he ducked and rolled away.  
  
His hand still tingled with whatever it’d made contact with; and having made contact, he could still feel it, sense it. Like a huge waterfall when you were out of sight of it: you could still hear it and feel the vibration in the rock, smell the spray in the air, feel the updraft coming off it. Even without sight, you knew it was there.  
  
And after the first shock of contact, it drew him. Drew his demon: he felt himself going to game face, reaching out and moving toward the thing. When he touched it again, his body knew it. It was part of the utter confusion he’d made himself remember earlier because that account had been required of him. There all the time, the background to everything that had happened then. What had caught and held him, so even unbound he probably couldn’t have left it except that Buffy had come and given him something else to focus on and made him move in a different direction that was away. It was utterly terrifying. Yet he couldn’t will himself away from it. Even touching it wasn’t enough. It still drew, wanting more of him. Deeper contact. It wanted to devour him and he wanted to let it.  
  
Behind him, Angel laughed and yanked him away. Broke the contact. Took the thing away, remarking, “Even unamplified and from this distance, that’s a lot of power. Imagine what it will do when it’s set within a couple of hundred yards of the source and has some major witch mojo behind it. You want vampires, Giles? I assure you, we’ll have vampires. Probably including every Turok-han above ground and in range, though that hasn’t been tested yet. The biggest vampire brawl ever--complete melee: the all against the all. On our timetable, not the First’s.”  
  
Harris asked, “OK, so what has it got going for it besides major ugly, that’s presumably not a big factor with blind bleach boy here? What _is_ it?”  
  
Spike didn’t hear the answer because he was out in the hall and remembering his way to the elevator. Finding the cool metal doors told him where the buttons would be: to the right because everything was set for the convenience of the right-handed, so he always knew to reach the least convenient way for himself. When the doors opened, no trouble with those buttons, the bottom one would be _down_. And from the lobby, no trouble finding the street.  
  
He hadn’t needed to hear Angel’s answer because he knew it. His circle of scars knew it. His bones knew it. _Hellmouth_. The essence of it stored somehow like a battery in a jar.  
  
Out in the open, he could still feel it. Anywhere within a hundred miles of Sunnydale, a vamp could feel it. But not compelling, with so many other things around. Simply attractive. Pleasant to the demon. Like the prospect of a really wild fight. Excellent feeding. Fucking and coming all night.  
  
He checked, touching fingertips to forehead, but he’d had the sense to shed game face somewhere between the suite and the street. He wasn’t making any kind of scary exhibition of himself to the few people still abroad. Having been at rigid attention, his demon had settled back into its accustomed vague boredom with nothing much to interest it, so that was all right.  
  
He got another cigarette lit but didn’t play around with the lighter because he had better lights now. He could see the double lines of streetlights and therefore knew where the street was, and dimly the parked cars though not the make or model or color very well. In front of the hotel, he knew where he was and therefore knew how everything was laid out around him. After nearly seven damn years in Sunnyhell, not counting the occasional absence in South America or Africa, he certainly ought to know.  
  
Hearing Harris’ voice, Spike started walking quite fast, head bent because he knew his hair was conspicuous, taking the first corner. Finding that all quiet, he ran. Didn’t mean to be caught, taken back to that hotel suite where the thing was, even if that was where Angel wanted him. Angel couldn’t command what he couldn’t catch, and Spike had had about all of Angel he wanted for a single night.  
  
After a few blocks, Spike figured he was beyond all likely pursuit and slowed to a stroll. He didn’t want to go back to Casa Summers, Buffy was all upset with him over the amulet and would want to argue with him about it. Casa Spike and Casa Mike were too close and too predictable. Somebody might look for him there. Spike decided what he really wanted was to go home.  
  
By the time he’d left the last of the streetlights that surrounded the cemetery, he found that the moonlight was bright enough for him to see by reasonably well. He could see the headstones and the shadows they cast on the ground. He could even distinguish between the shadows and the occasional open grave, though the warning was mostly the smell of fresh-turned earth. Anyway, he didn’t fall into any of them. He’d noticed some other vamps abroad but none close and he’d waited until they’d passed out of range without noticing him in return. He didn’t particularly feel like a fight or like killing anything and drunk and unarmed, it was probably better to just stay out of the way of trouble.  
  
His old crypt was a mess, of course. He hadn’t expected anything else. First it’d been blown up, and when he’d left it he hadn’t been much more popular with the cousins than he was now, so it’d come in for quite a bit of deliberate trashing in his absence. Nothing Clem, that he’d left as a sort of caretaker, could have done to prevent it. No blame coming to Clem over it. Just how it was.  
  
He heaved out the bodies of some dead cats someone had slung in and piled some of the lighter debris onto the remains of one of the tapestries he’d had hung against drafts, clearing the floor enough, at least, to let him move around between the central sarcophagus and the walls. Decent fighting space, nothing major to trip over.  
  
Of course looters had picked the ground level clean of anything worth selling or using and trashed the rest. But he’d never kept anything he much cared about topside anyway. He figured there was a good chance some of his caches belowground might have been missed. When he had the ground level space mostly clear and smelling habitable, he dropped down to the lower level and started checking there.  
  
He found a candle by stepping on it, and it was still intact enough to be lit.  
  
His bed was gone. Must have been a bitch to take apart and transport because it’d been a bitch to get there in the first place. He didn’t envy whatever scavenger had taken on that chore. Of course there were so many abandoned houses in Sunnydale now, nobody would go to that much trouble with easier pickings to be had. The TV was gone too, naturally.  
  
One of his caches, back in the tunnels, yielded some of his weapons. In poor condition from rust, and the leather hilts mildewed, but none beyond recovery with a little care and patience. They were good weapons, well made and well balanced and familiar to his hand. He thought the children might care to see them since some were quite old, many times antique; and he didn’t think they’d mind helping bring them back to good serviceable condition.  
  
He laid them out below the topside opening, by the foot of the damaged ladder nobody had bothered to steal. Then he went back into the tunnels, farther in, to check the cache he’d left for last, fearing to find it empty: the S-curved niche where he’d hidden his treasure box. He sighed when his hand found it, still all waterproofed and safe. He patted it and left it there, returning to the job of transferring the weapons topside a few at a time. But when that was done he found he’d changed his mind. He dropped to the lower level and retrieved the box and carried the candle back with him.  
  
The sarcophagus had served him well enough for a bed before Slayer visits had required something less rigid and narrow. After that it’d been a table and something to lean against, talking, besides a barrier and defense in case of intrusion. Now it was a clear place where he could sit, unwrap the paraffin-sealed edges of the oilcloth, open his tin box, and examine the contents by candlelight.  
  
A cameo pierced as a pendant and rubbed nearly flat. Two packets of letters, each bound with a ribbon. Some tintypes, a little clouded but still holding the faces--some beloved, some less so--against change and forgetfulness. The daguerreotypes Angelus had had done in Marseilles Spike set aside quickly, having had all the recent reminders of that he wanted. A doll’s head, bald, with its eyes poked out with sharp scissors: the first Miss Edith. A black garter, slightly moth-eaten. A plastic bag of yellowed newspaper clippings.  
  
Spike began sorting the objects into two piles. Some he decided he was ready to be rid of. The others would go back into the box.  
  
Aware of a presence, Spike said, “Slayer.”  
  
Just inside the door, Buffy said, “I saw the light.”  
  
“Patrolling?”  
  
“Giles called. I knew pretty well where you weren’t. So I thought maybe I knew where you might be.”  
  
When she didn’t move, Spike said, “You can come in. Nothing much here anymore. The reavers have been through. An’ quite a lot of dead leaves.”  
  
Maybe because he hadn’t looked at her, she circled around behind him and leaned her elbows on the sarcophagus, which was a good height for that. Spike turned the Marseilles pictures face-down.  
  
When Buffy didn’t try to touch or examine any of his things, Spike picked up the cameo and showed it to her in his palm. “My mother. Her name was Anne.”  
  
With hesitance that asked permission, Buffy took the cameo in two fingers and moved it nearer the candle’s light.  
  
“Don’t be polite,” Spike said. “It’s not very like her anyway. Such things were cheaply had then and not many proper artists employed in the making of them. Like three-for-a-quarter pictures in a booth in the five and dime. An’ there’s not even five and dimes anymore, they were gone before you were born.”  
  
Buffy handed the cameo back carefully and Spike returned it to the box. She asked, “Nostalgia pangs?”  
  
“Just a few things I’d as soon not lose.” It wasn’t a good time for sorting. Spike scooped everything back into the box and shut the lid. “Did you walk, or come in the van?”  
  
“Walked.”  
  
“Then maybe you’d lend me a hand with some of these weapons. I think maybe the children, the Potentials, would help me get them back in proper condition.”  
  
Between the two of them, they gathered up all the weapons. Spike tipped his stack over his right shoulder with his box under his arm. Buffy carried her stack like a bundle of sticks, across both arms, blades laid carefully flat.  
  
Walking the way they’d walked so often before, from his crypt to Casa Summers, Spike was waiting for Buffy to bring up the matter of the amulet. Waiting for her to start arguing. When she didn’t, his wariness drained off. They fell into step. The distance between them diminished and they drifted together, shoulder against shoulder, hip against hip.  
  
Buffy shot him a sideways glance but didn’t say anything.  
  
“What is it, pet?”  
  
“Only your eyes. I’ve missed them.”  
  
“Not gonna tell me how much better I look?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Good, because I’m sick of that, truth be told. Only time anybody says how much better you look, it’s because you look so much worse than you’d like. Seen a starved vamp a time or two. Know it’s not a pretty sight. Much sooner none of you lot had seen me like that.”  
  
“I like you better this way, that’s true. When there’s something to get hold of. But I still love you, regardless.”  
  
As it had each time she’d said it, that comment struck him like a hard blow to the chest. He bent his head and didn’t reply.  
  
They’d come to Revello, but Buffy kept walking on past the house.  
  
“Where you headed, love?”  
  
“Casa Spike. You said you wanted the SITs to work on the weaponry. And I don’t care to try getting a two-handed broadsword through a little gap in the hedge.”  
  
“Yeah.” Spike caught up in a couple of strides, then matched pace again.  
  
As they turned the corner Buffy added, as if casually, “Anyway, it’s quieter there.”  
  
“You don’t have try being subtle about it, love. I know you’re not pleased with me. Know perfectly well I’m being humored. Managed.”  
  
She looked around again. “D’you mind?”  
  
“S’pose not. Just don’t fancy spending the time fighting with you, is all.”  
  
“Don’t want to fight with you either. I can think of several better ways of spending the time. Since our supply of sometimes seems less infinite that we’d thought.”  
  
Spike took a very sharp interest in that. “Meaning…sometime is now?”  
  
“At least soon,” Buffy responded. Before disappointment could set in, she added, “I’d rather get indoors first. Your crypt was very nice in its way, very atmospheric. Cozy. Fine for a couple of old formerly dead people to hang out. Talk. Have the occasional brawl. Good fighting space there. Not so much on the comfort.”  
  
Spike quoted Marvell: “‘The graves a fine and private place / But none I think do there embrace.’”  
  
“Not without a whole lot of aches and pains the next morning. As I recall. I prefer a bed.”  
  
“Ahuh. All right.”  
  
“You can manage that?”  
  
“I expect.”  
  
“Thought you could. Watch the axe, it’s gonna hit-- Never mind.”


	23. Section 6: Into the Light — The Chaos Stone

The SITs discovered the pile of old weapons with cries of joy and admiration. Pouncing on them, they refused breakfast and weapons practice in favor of sharpening and polishing the blades, bringing the leather back to a sticky luster, rubbing linseed oil into the hand-smoothed hafts. Spike was surprised because the weapons were plain and had seen years of hard use whereas their usual weapons, the Renfaire goods, were all tarted up with enamel work, etched curlicues and banding, tassels, and the like. Far prettier.  
  
Drawing a whetstone along the blade of a Napoleonic cavalry saber in long even strokes, Kim commented, “Tourist trash. Better than nothing, but really. Now this, this is _real_. Anybody could tell. Look how it takes an edge! I could cut wood with it, not that anybody’d want to, and it would slice right through. Hit bone and it wouldn’t shatter. The balance is perfect. Just gorgeous! Tell me about this one, Spike.”  
  
So he settled down and started working on a Syrian blade modeled on a Roman short sword and told Kim the history of the saber and why it curved the way it did, how it wasn’t for thrusting but slicing, long arc of swing. Why it wasn’t wielded two-handed like the similarly shaped katana. And after that, nothing would do but his demonstrating the weapons in turn, all the SITs crowded against the walls and perched in a tight row along the back of the sofa.  
  
Picking up a long-hafted battle axe, Spike said, “Axe like this, it’s a fine weapon for fighting afoot, but it needs space. Not for close quarters or attack in a group. Too easy to slice your chums on the backswing. And not the best weapon for children such as yourselves: too top-heavy.”  
  
“Upper body strength,” the sofa row chorused in a disgusted sing-song.  
  
“No shame in it. Best weapon is the one you can use the best, the one won’t get you killed. Not the prettiest or the longest. Fit the weapon to your strengths, then fit yourself to the weapon. Learn it so it’s a part of you. Learn its powers and its limits, ‘cause everything’s got limits. Can’t take out the opposition at ten paces with a saber but might with a good throwing knife or even a slingshot, though we don’t have any of those.” Spike stopped to consider, then put the thought away. No time now to add a new weapon or get the children, the Potentials, trained with it. “It’s all in the circumstances. Axe like this, it’s good against massed opposition, most particularly with swords because then, see, you got the reach of them. But if you can’t dance fast with it, they’ll come at you on the backside of the swing. And no particular good against archers. And the good part about that is?”  
  
Just about every hand went up. Spike nodded at Gail.  
  
“Present opposition has no archers!”  
  
“Right you are. Biters are dumb as every other vamp, don’t like using weapons at all, the glorious stupid purity of size, quickness, strength, and the ever-reliable fists and fangs. Barehanded and just about unbeatable against unarmed opposition. And the Bringers with their wavy knives and berserker tactics, just come at you, no defensive moves at all. So long as there are still people here, the First can always make more Bringers and so isn’t sparing of those it has. You lot have every advantage but one. You’re well armed and well trained, you’re experienced in lots of different situations, you know your team moves and your proper distances so you’re not blundering into the arc of somebody else’s swing or getting in each other’s way. You listen for the signals that tell you how the whole fight is going, so you push or back off together, nobody gets stranded and surrounded. What’s the one thing they got goin’ for them that we don’t? ‘Manda.”  
  
“Numbers. And reinforcements. We’re all we’ve got.”  
  
“Exactly so. So our defensive moves are as important as our offense. We got to keep ourselves alive because there’s no more of us coming to replace any casualties. Better to duck out and wait for a better chance than keep going and get hurt bad or maybe killed. We’re lucky that way: nobody here apt to go all crazy and berserker. Except me sometimes. And I can get away with that why?”  
  
Amanda answered, “Because if they don’t kill you outright, if you’re not dusted on the spot, you heal. Eventually. And you’re still a maniac in a fight, and it’s still stupid, because we need you to watch and understand how it’s all going and call the signals for us. So we wish you’d think to be a little more careful of yourself, Spike.”  
  
Spike shrugged, smiling. “I just do how I do, you know that. Not really made for a general. Just pretending as best I can. Not used to sending others to do my fighting for me, much less a bunch of children. Potentials. But I don’t forget so quick as I used to--have to credit me for that.”  
  
Spike sobered, laying the axe down, because he could see no way he’d be with them when the big fight came. Couldn’t be helped, but he still regretted having to surrender this partnership. They’d have to choose a new commander from among themselves. Nobody else was trained or fit.  
  
Kennedy commented, “It’s going to be soon. Isn’t it.”  
  
“I expect. Pretty soon now.”  
  
Kim said, “When it’s time, I’d really like to use that saber, Spike. I know there’s not enough of the fine weapons for everybody and we probably ought to cut cards for it, but if it’s OK with you for us to use them and if I get high card, I’d like to put first dibs on the saber.”  
  
Noise erupted, everybody calling to claim some weapon. Amanda settled things by getting the deck and letting everybody cut. It took two draws. Drawing a face card granted the option of claiming one of Spike’s weapons. A third draw settled the order of claiming. Practically apoplectic with glee, Kim claimed the saber.  
  
“Now, show some sense,” Spike warned them. “Don’t anybody claim one of my old toys if it doesn’t feel good to your hand. If it’s too heavy or too long for you to control the swing and the whole of the blade, hilt to point. If you can’t dance with it, you don’t want it. No amount of dumb sentimental goop is worth adding to your risk, and reducing your effectiveness, by fighting with a weapon that’s not fit for you. ‘M almost sorry now I fetched ‘em back. Didn’t imagine you lot taking to them like you have. ‘Tisn’t a fine weapon if it gets you hurt. Or killed. Wouldn’t want to be the cause of that.”  
  
Nobody answered him. Everybody ignored him, busy with the weapons claiming.  
  
There was a lot more of that than there used to be: got too fucking independent by half while he was away. Since he’d given them back to themselves. Frowning at the floor, worrying, Spike wondered if he should try to do something about that or let them be.  
  
Best they be independent, not waiting on his every word, since they’d be going into the fight that way. Maybe the old weapons would build their confidence and be lucky for them on that account, against logic. Hard to know or even guess right, a thing like that.  
  
And every one of them bandaged someplace on an arm from feeding him up so fine over the past weeks. But none needed today, of course: last night had been someday. Spike felt as though he wouldn’t need to feed or sleep ever again. As to shagging, that was something you could never get a surfeit of. Though it was true Buffy had been hard to waken and had threatened to call in sick rather than return to Casa Summers and make ready for work…. Fair worn out, she’d been. And not from blood-loss, neither.  
  
Slayer healing renewed the supply within minutes. And not much needed, no more than a couple of deep swallows, then little sips at appropriate moments, at the last instant before explosion. More and more an automatic part of the reflex of release, a completed circle. After the first few times, no more needed to set them both off than the press of his mouth to the mark.  
  
Slayer and vampire, each doing for and seeing to the other. The achievement of what felt like a state of corporeal grace and entire contentment. It made glorious, complete sense, but who would ever have imagined such a thing except in a dream?  
  
**********  
  
Explaining, “I didn’t want to reveal anything about this until we had a reliable way of guarding our thoughts,” Angel set a box on the weapons chest.  
  
When Angel opened the box, Willow turned her eyes away after one glance. The object inside was disturbing: if she tried to look at it steadily, she was gonna throw up--not because of its appearance but because of its roiling incoherent energies.  
  
Angel went on, “It was a dimensional key. I tracked it down hoping it would give access to a dimension that can’t be reached by spells or conventional portals. It doesn’t. It’s been spoiled--randomized--by being sealed in a Hellmouth for at least a thousand years. One of the stories connected to it is that it was originally Atlantean. According to the story, the fall of Atlantis was caused by the opening of a Hellmouth there. Or maybe its collapse. Anyway, this was supposedly involved. It’s called the Chaos Stone.”  
  
Willow chanced another quick look. Bitter fluid filled her mouth and she swallowed it down. The original shape of the object could no longer be discerned. About the size of a melon, it was encased in a lopsided grey accretion of shells cemented in sand. It had been underwater for a long, long time, gnawed by the sea.  
  
Mouth twitching, eyes narrowed and pained, she blurted, “I can’t heal that.”  
  
“You don’t have to. It’s fine for our purposes the way it is. What we’ll need you to do is amplify it. Increase the range of its signal.”  
  
“It’s not a key. It’s a dimensional rift and everything’s trying to pour through. A mini-Hellmouth in its own right!”  
  
“Yes, I know.” Angel shut the box again and latched it. The horrible feeling coming off it decreased a little. “The box provides some shielding. You might want to add some wards to the house, and maybe the box, to keep the signal contained. But I’ve had it in my hotel suite for over a month without any problem. There can’t be significant leakage. Otherwise I would have had company, since no invitation’s needed to approach it.” Angel looked at her to see if she understood that as a vampire, his residence in a place created no mystical barrier to intrusion by other vampires, as a human’s would.  
  
Willow knew that: vampires had no right of place. Willow also understood that, unpleasant as she found the Stone’s emanations, vampires would be attracted to them as they were to the Hellmouth itself. She asked Angel bluntly, “Why aren’t you affected?”  
  
“I don’t let myself be. It’s a matter of control.” He shrugged. “Spike was all over the thing when I showed it to him, last night.” That plainly pleased him.  
  
“Yeah,” Willow responded tightly. Thinking about Angel and Spike and control, all together, made her almost as sick as the Stone did. She backed away from the box, one hand gripping the other. “All right, it’s here. I’ll ward it. Then I’ll see what I can do with it on my own. Working with a talisman with that kind of power takes a circle. A coven. An experienced coven. You’re expecting a lot here, Angel.”  
  
Angel showed no reaction to her anxious, resentful look. He said soothingly, “I’m sure a witch with your power will find a way. Borrow power, if you need to. I’m certain you know how to do that. This is half the equation, Willow. The other half is the amulet. So this is important.” He started toward the door. Since it was mid-morning, Willow figured he had come through the tunnels and would have to return that way. With the door open, Angel turned to say, “Be sure you have it locked down by dark.”  
  
A breakfast of tea and gnawed fingernails provided Willow with no means of safe approach to the Stone, much less manipulating its energies. Sure, easy for Angel to tell her to borrow power. _Leech_ power was more like it. Drain people of their natural energy like a vampire going through a congregation or a schoolroom. That would be a bad business. Not outright dark, if the circle was willing, but extremely dangerous.  
  
On a panicked impulse, she called Giles. She wouldn’t discuss the problem on the phone. Although both she and Giles were protected, the phone lines weren’t. She just asked him to come.  
  
When Giles arrived, Willow opted for lawn chairs in the yard, in the sunshine. She felt frozen to the marrow. “I don’t know what to do about this, Giles. Could you maybe contact the coven for me? Ask them to lend power?”  
  
“Willow, you know better than that. The Stone is not a Natural object, and Natural forces are not going to contain it. The coven would refuse, considering the attempt both abhorrent and useless. No point, I’m afraid, in even asking them.”  
  
Willow blurted, “You stored power once. _That_ time. Couldn’t you do it again? Drain off and store as much as you can, then let me tap into it?”  
  
Giles thoughtfully looked in the direction Willow was looking: toward Casa Spike and the Potentials leaping and turning in weapons drill in the yard. “I am not a mage, Willow, as you know. I can accept power: I cannot take it. And yes, unless we are to involve total and uncomprehending strangers, which really isn’t feasible, the Potentials are the only possible source numerous and vital enough to endure such a drain. Which would affect their ability to function as fighters for some considerable time. Even if all went well.”  
  
“Yeah.” Willow laughed bitterly. “And my record in controlling myself in a power drain is so fantastic. My record in handling that much power, once I got it, without going all black-eyed and veiny is even more fantastic. Giles, I really, really don’t think I can do this! I know it’s important, and I want to help, I’ve been waiting to help, doing my meditations and everything, but this is too much, I can’t do it--” Fists against her eyes, scrunched up all tight in the chair, Willow began to bawl. She was such a terrible nerd loser, letting everybody down, able to imagine what was needed but bone-afraid to do it, stupid awful nerd coward loser, helpless when faced with a real crisis or anything with real power.  
  
A hand came down on her shoulder and, beside her, Kennedy’s voice demanded coldly, “What’s this all about?”  
  
Willow looked up. In her swimming vision, Kennedy was glaring at Giles, suspecting him of being responsible for Willow’s distress.  
  
Willow felt even worse, realizing that she was making such a pitiful exhibition of herself that the SITs had noticed from the next yard. They were coming, concerned. Giles abruptly rose and returned to the house as Willow tried to explain there was nothing anybody could do, except maybe there was, but she didn’t dare try it, sucking energy out of them all.  
  
“Maybe we need to set up another roster,” remarked Kim, some kind of joke Willow didn’t understand. Kim bristled when told by Kennedy to shut up. Kim accused, “You’re just being a bitch on account of the saber.”  
  
“I don’t want any of his filthy old rat-stickers. I didn’t even cut for one,” Kennedy retorted.  
  
Several of the other SITs started getting into the quarrel, leaning forward into each other’s faces, scowling, loud-voiced. Spike’s sardonic drawl cut in and the SITs gravitated to him as he reached the sufficient shade of the maple tree, discarding the blanket he’d used to cross the sunny open space. The Potentials pointed indignantly, claiming injury and disrespect, many gesturing with long sharp weapons. And Giles came back with the box.  
  
“Ah,” said Spike in the tone of one to whom everything was now clear. “Everybody, settle. ‘Tisn’t you, it’s what’s in that box there. Stone of Discord, or whatever the hell it’s called. Why are we so lucky, Rupert?”  
  
Giles crossed the yard and started explaining. The SITs grudgingly separated to give him space, and after a moment Amanda brought and opened a chair for him. When Giles sat, Spike dropped into his usual feral crouch, head cocked, listening while his eyes slowly scanned the SITs. They quieted, most settling on the grass, when they found Spike looking at them.  
  
Spike called to Willow. She didn’t want to go, admit her coward loser nerdiness in front of everybody. But Spike couldn’t come to her, not in the broad daylight, so she forced herself across the yard.  
  
Instead of demanding why she wasn’t doing what was necessary, Spike remarked sympathetically, “Gets into your bones, doesn’t it. Sets your teeth on edge, like.” That, of course, only made Willow feel worse. “Think maybe I can sort that a bit. No harm to trying, anyway. Let me have your hands here a minute.”  
  
His upturned waiting hands let Willow know what was expected. Not knowing what else to do, she sat down, about knee to knee with him, and put her hands in his.  
  
Something changed. Eased. Stilled.  
  
Wide-eyed, Willow asked, “What did you do?”  
  
“Sorted you, just a little. Damped down the edge where it was bothering you so.” Releasing her hands, Spike looked from her to the box Giles held. “Let me have that, Rupert.”  
  
“Spike, do you believe that’s wise?”  
  
“Not gonna hurt me none. Not as well as I know it. Just set it down. Now, how about if you all back off a ways. Go on, clear off.”  
  
When he was satisfied with their distance, Spike opened the box and took the Stone into his hands. He was quietly poised, holding it, eyes shut, face calm. Nothing to see in the normal way. But when Willow looked with other sight, she found his aura flaring, closing, leaning oblong, twisting: like a sheet warping and cracking to a high wind.  
  
Willow muttered to Giles, “He’s actually _channeling_ the damn thing!”  
  
“How?”  
  
Willow just shook her head. All she could think of was the contrast between Angel’s grim self-control that refused to let the Stone affect him, and what she saw as Spike’s serene acceptance, poised in the midst of chaos. Letting it in. Letting it affect him and yet in a curious way unmoved by it nevertheless. It was frantic and flailing; he was at rest, comfortable within it--as casual about doing this chore as any other.  
  
She couldn’t maintain othersight long enough to see what happened. But she felt it happen. Like an overcast upon her heart, lifting. Her conviction of worthlessness and inadequacy retreating, dissipating.  
  
Spike sighed and set the Stone back in the box. “Should be a bit better for you lot now,” he remarked, shutting the lid.  
  
Giles asked, “What did you do?”  
  
“A little hard to describe.” Spike busied his hands getting out a cigarette and lighting it. Small chores to occupy his hands, no different from holding the Stone, that became simple in the doing and nothing remarkable at all. “Hellmouth itself doesn’t bother humans much. High School’s built right on top of it, after all, yet it’s rare for anybody to come down with anything worse than a case of the fidgets. Buffy works there most every day and it doesn’t trouble her. So I guess one way to say is, I tuned it to the same resonance as the Hellmouth, damped down the extra harmonics it was putting out. If it’d been music, I’d say I transposed it to a different key you can’t hear so well as we can. Or adjusted the bandwidth, or the spectrum, same difference. A matter of feel, and there’s not really words for that. Stone’s still doin’ what it did, just not anymore in a way that should trouble you lot so much.”  
  
Willow prompted, “But _how_ could you do it? With no energy draw, no--”  
  
Spike shrugged. “Used to it, I expect. Tuned to it, my own self. Demon here, an’ all. So no great matter to latch onto it, let it latch onto me, more like…. Something like lifting a load. Take it up, then come to balance with it. Like I said: hard to describe.”  
  
Giles remarked gravely, “You must have an extraordinarily strong sense of balance, then.”  
  
“Yeah,” said Spike, with a slow, reflective smile. “Got it back, seems like. Had to get rid of a whole lot of things first. Distractions. But with them all set aside, the rest has come back to balance. Know what I am. What I’m for. What I’m doing….” Rising, he looked around at the SITs. “So, my treasures, what exactly do you think you’re doing hanging about here, idle as sheep?”  
  
As the SITs scattered and Spike pulled the enveloping blanket over his head to make the sprint back to the shade of the porch, Willow watched until he was safely there, then bent to scoop up the box.  
  
She could amplify the Stone’s force now the way Angel wanted. She could braid it and tie the skeins with blue ribbons. She could bring it to a steady boil like a teakettle and make it whistle Dixie. Whatever its effect on demons, its power was no longer power over her.  
  
She’d had it all backward. She’d believed she needed to control things, external forces. Manipulate them. Whereas what was required was that she change herself and let herself be changed. Willow finally saw what the coven had been wittering on about, all those months. What Tara had tried, over and over, to tell her. She had to find her own balance. Then the rest would fall into place.  
  
She regarded the vampire with happy, ungrudged admiration.  
  
Spike was going to close the Hellmouth and Willow was going to help him. She no longer had any doubt or any resistance to the prospect.  
  
**********  
  
For Anya to stick a _Closed for Inventory_ sign in the front window of the Magic Box and lock the door before noon on a business day showed Dawn that Anya was really serious. So Dawn was actually gonna have to make good on her claim to being the onsite representative of the Powers That Be.  
  
Well, she’d try, because she had to. And they’d squash her like a bug. She just knew it.  
  
While Anya bustled about, collecting nice candles and other unnecessary but decorative paraphernalia, Dawn remarked, “I told Spike to think of Her as Lady Gates. So he could have a person in his mind, that he could imagine, that he was dealing with. But She’s not. She’s a Power. She’s not even a _she_ : She’s a They. Might as well think of having a chat with the Pacific Ocean. I’m the only part who’s a person, a single viewpoint. And I was soooo stupid to make you a promise like that!”  
  
“Well, it’s not as though I twisted your arm,” Anya responded, entirely without sympathy. “You named the bargain, I didn’t. I fulfilled my part, exactly as contracted. Now I expect you to perform yours. And it’s in your own interests, after all: if Spike incinerates, you go _poof_. I can’t imagine you’re looking forward to that.”  
  
“I could go _poof_ just as easily here in the shop--”  
  
“Hadn’t thought of that.” Biting her lip, Anya started rapidly gathering up everything she’d put down. “Training room, then. Away from the merchandise. Well, come on, and bring the crystal.”  
  
That was the only object that actually was needed. A big hard lump in a red velvet drawstring bag. About grapefruit sized. Dawn took the bag by its cords and dragged after Anya into the annex.  
  
Anya was setting up again on one of the benches by the streetside wall. Dawn plunked the bag down and got a glare. Anya said, “Take care with that, it’s very valuable. I lent it to Spike, and he left it laying in the alley. So I couldn’t even bill him for its use, not that there’d be any point in it. He never has anything anyway. It’s a wonder it wasn’t damaged. Just spill it out. Gently. Without touching it. And you don’t have to tell me about the Powers, I’ve been dealing with them for years. I just think of large international conglomerates. Absolutely no personality, nothing you could hit, but intention and effects, oh, yes. Arashmahar is more a committee consensus than an actual place. It’s there because everybody has agreed to believe it’s there. Rather like Lourdes or the South Pole. Consensus reality can be very annoying, let me tell you: get out of step with everyone else and you start sinking through the floor. Very disconcerting. Particularly in multi-story buildings.” Anya lit several pillar candles and a stick of patchouli incense and considered the effect. “Now, are we all set?”  
  
“I suppose so,” Dawn admitted, and sank down on the bench.  
  
“Hold hands, then. You touch first because you’re the broker and I’m the client.”  
  
With Anya’s hands resting on hers, Dawn made a squint-eyed, wincing face and set her fingers on the crystal.  
  
Immediate attention. Something vast, whipping around to attend. Immense disapproval focused from interstellar distances upon one extremely tiny and frightened point.  
  
“It’s that bargain,” Dawn said. No reason not to speak, They’d understand her just as well no matter what she did. “You can find it if You review. I made it a couple of months ago before You reabsorbed me. The one with Anya.”  
  
“Hello,” Anya trilled. “I’m Anyanka, formerly of Arashmahar. Quite a lot of experience, as a Justice demon, in making and keeping bargains. I’m the client, and it’s very kind of You to take a moment to attend to this. I know it’s trivial to You to the point of utter insignificance, but from our limited perspectives as mortals, it’s quite important to us and we do appreciate it. The bargain was made in good faith and fully kept in all respects on my part. I deal in wishes. So if it’s agreeable, I’ll cast my request as a wish. I wish--”  
  
Anya broke off because the Presence had located the bargain and was doing the equivalent of holding it up with two fingers at the furthest possible remove from Itself. Viewing it with immense distaste.  
  
Dawn was made to feel how utterly and stupidly reckless it had been for her to tender such a promise. She had no right to commit the Powers to anything.  
  
“But You took it. When You took me. It’s right there, and You can’t pretend it isn’t. I promised on Your behalf and spoke with Your voice, and You didn’t repudiate it because You didn’t repudiate me. It wasn’t for myself, after all.”  
  
As proof, Dawn offered up the gestalt of circumstances and splendid altruistic motives that were the context of her asking Anya for a simple little teleport into the basement, so she could see how badly Spike was hurt and decide what to do about it. That had been very important, and she’d promised Anya a favor--anything in her power--as reward for help, and corresponding unnamed but dire punishment if that help were withheld. A bit melodramatic, perhaps, but quite straightforward in its terms.  
  
“I’m sure You’re aware,” Anya said, “of the present situation involving the Hellmouth here in Sunnydale at the present time. In fact, I’m quite certain You are, considering the degree to which the Powers have been influencing events and some of the people involved. Quite blatant, actually. In the nicest possible way, of course. And nobody could be more thoroughly in favor of closing the Hellmouth, as the direction Your influence has taken indicates is also Your intention, than myself. Nasty nuisance and always has been, and the alternative would be catastrophic to this dimension. I know it’s not much, but it’s become home, and I can’t believe you want to cede control of it to a Personage of such limited imagination as the First Evil. After all, what does the multiverse need with yet another hell dimension? In its present state, it at least has a mildly diverting variety.”  
  
“Anya,” Dawn muttered urgently. “They know. And They don’t care about your opinions, one way or the other. Get to the horses, Anya!”  
  
“Certainly. To business, then. Given Your involvement in the situation, You certainly know who Spike is. The vampire who dreams about the amulet. I want a period of 100% guaranteed total invulnerability for him within a range of three miles, in all directions, from the Hellmouth. This period is to begin two hours before he begins the attempt and last for two hours, local time, after he completes it, whatever the result. And during the attempt itself, of course. No loopholes, no exceptions. And nothing to hinder his freedom of movement or his freedom of choice. No dropping a hill on him, for instance, or burying him in some pit. He goes in intact and he comes out intact.  
  
“Given that this is a service he’s performing in part at Your behest, I shouldn’t think You’d find this an excessive precaution or reward for services rendered. I simply think his interests should be safeguarded. These are very reasonable terms. I--”  
  
The crystal sagged and melted into a puddle of dull slag. Contact was broken.  
  
Snatching her hands away, Anya exclaimed, “Well, that certainly was rude and sudden, and I’ve lost the price of a very valuable crystal in the process.”  
  
“They agreed, Anya,” Dawn announced glumly.  
  
“What?”  
  
“They agreed to your terms. On one condition: when Spike goes in, we have to go in with him. With no invulnerability clause.”


	24. Section 6: Into the Light — Hellmouth

Tipping the broadsword onto his shoulder, Spike turned and walked backward a few paces, surveying Casa Summers--the light seeping around boarded windows, the shape of the roof, and the long porch in the bright moonlight that was everywhere. The moon was westering into some streaky high silver clouds. It was just past three, and he’d got away easier than he’d expected. It’d been a final briefing and sendoff--completely unnecessary. He wouldn’t have showed up at all except that he needed the amulet. He’d had to accept a twist of herbs and feathers Willow said was a clear-headedness charm, and various good wishes, handshakes, and hugs, but it could have been much worse. No arguments. Hardly any emotional outbursts except for Dawn, hanging on so and having to be patiently pried off before she’d let him go.  
  
People did make such a fuss about things. But Spike wanted it simple, just turn and leave without dramatics, and mostly they’d let him do that. Even Buffy. It had been chiefly her reaction he’d been concerned about. Braced and waiting for it. But as things had fallen out, she’d never made a peep, which was uncommonly sensible of her.  
  
The SITs weren’t back from patrol yet, so he’d ducked all that predictable flap too.  
  
The amulet purred on his chest like a tiny motor at idle. Other banked energies he could feel, like the aura the witch claimed he was putting out, spread wide like wings. Didn’t altogether believe that, but felt as though it could be true. Likely just sick of being still, bent tight as a bow, impatient to be gone. Anyway, everything Planned: in place and set as much as it could be in advance of the event. His place in it locked in and certain.  
  
Wheeling about, he continued down the deserted street. Off in the distance a house was burning with nobody taking any apparent notice. Quite a lot of feral pets about, a few cruising dog packs forming up and running silent along the suburban lanes though with sense enough to steer wide of him. Cruising vamp packs, too, sometimes: with people fewer and staying indoors through the dark times, hunting was bad enough that the cousins had been forced to turn creative. Since they couldn’t get in, they’d toss gasoline bombs improvised in soda bottles to drive the prey out. That burning house off aways was probably one such. Spike shook his head, still a little sad about how his idea of putting some of that wasted potential to use, turning the cousins into fighters, had fizzled out. Vamps wouldn’t stir one inch beyond what they had to, what they could see an immediate chance of satisfaction in. Spike had imagined something like a militia. Angel was quite content with a mob and would likely get what he wanted, since he didn’t want much.  
  
Along about four thirty, Angel, Willow, and that Harris would set up in the bank building Angel had chosen and fortified. Then Angel would open the box. The witch would magnify and direct the enticing shriek of the Chaos Stone, identifying that location as the most desirable piece of real estate in the whole of Sunnydale. Vamps would start gathering from all over, drawn to it. With locks, barricades, wards, spells, and weapons, the cousins would be kept out long enough for the Biters to start showing up: drawn by the same call, the same promise of satisfaction. And of course they’d start fighting over it. Fighting with each other. Just fighting. Once a brawl like that got rolling, it would feed on itself till nobody was left standing.  
  
Spike felt several ways about the Plan. He appreciated its simplicity, that meant not a lot could go wrong if you were prepared to accept the wholesale destruction of several city blocks and any people unlucky enough to get caught up in it as minimum collateral damage. He appreciated its indirection: it wasn’t the main battle but a diversion, to pull as many of the Turok-han as possible away from the school, to give Spike the best chance of slipping in unnoticed before sunrise.  
  
When the light drove surviving Biters and cousins alike underground, into the tunnels and sewers, they’d find the limited ways back toward the school blocked by the Slayer and the SITs, who’d have an advantage in the enclosed spaces, with the opposition having to line up to get at them.  
  
Spike’s job was to close the Hellmouth and prevent reinforcements arriving from behind. Close off the First’s access to this dimension altogether. End it all.  
  
Spike appreciated the trust and responsibility that represented--what he’d endured the supplice for. This time, he wouldn’t fail. This time, he’d do the thing properly and get it right.  
  
And of course Angel’s stratagem also promised to be a cracking marvelous brawl, the finest in centuries of vampire mayhem. Spike mildly regretted having to miss it.  
  
Up ahead, somebody stood in the intersection leaning on a battle axe comfortably propped, blade down. From any distance and any direction, Spike knew that silhouette: Slayer.  
  
Approaching, he shook his head and sighed.  
  
Buffy swung the axe onto her shoulder and fell into step on his right. “I don’t join the show until after sunrise,” she remarked in her brightest, most unconvincingly cheerful voice. “So I figured you might not mind a little company.”  
  
Spike didn’t say anything, just gave her a look. In spite of himself, he found himself shortening stride so she wouldn’t have to trot to keep up. She was so tiny, vivid, and indomitable. Her delicate ferocity never failed to tug at his heart.  
  
She had no business being here, and they both knew it, and here she was anyway, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.  
  
She wore dove-grey slacks, little cuffed boots, and a dark green halter top with tiny spangley flecks woven in some way: a different outfit than she’d had for the sendoff. That was what’d kept her, then: she’d stopped to change clothes.  
  
She’d pulled all the hair from her ears upward into a high bouncing ponytail. The rest swung free, golden and shining. She smelled wonderful.  
  
He’d never expected to see her again.  
  
“Do you?” she persisted. “Mind?”  
  
“If you cared, you wouldn’t have come. And that’s no fit weapon for a tunnel. Be bangin’ into the walls, both sides.”  
  
“You think so? Maybe. It’s what I felt like for tonight. Big blade, long swing. Be a good weapon against Bringers. Against Turok-han, not so much. You want to swap?”  
  
He took a long stride and came to a stance, blocking her way. “Why are you doing this?”  
  
“Doing what?”  
  
“Making everything harder. Making yourself miserable.”  
  
“I’m not miserable. Do I look miserable?” Without waiting for a response, she leaned to see past him. “Look, there’s Anya. And Dawn.” Buffy began waving. “Hi, Dawnie!”  
  
When Spike turned, he saw the van parked up ahead. Anya and Dawn were leaning against it, eating ice-cream cones. With no effort he knew the sequence: the three of them piling into the van and getting ahead of him, then Buffy loping back to intercept.  
  
As Anya and Dawn strolled toward them, Spike saw Dawn had a crossbow and a cylinder of quarrels hanging on a shoulder strap. Anya had a hand axe slung from a belt and almost concealed within the folds of her full skirt.  
  
Spike turned his head hard away. “Oh, come on!”  
  
“Yeah,” Dawn chirped. “Nice of you to invite us.”  
  
“You’re not invited, Bit. Not none of you. Where I’m going, you can’t go. What I do, you can’t have any part in. You know that! So what are you damn well playing at?”  
  
“There’s been a change of plan,” Anya commented.  
  
Dropping the playful pretense, Buffy said flatly, “Spike, I put you on notice some time ago. I know what you want and what you think you’re for. But what I do isn’t up to you. And I told you: if you go, we go. Both of us or none at all. If Faith has to break out of prison to field the next apocalypse, then that’s her problem. Somebody’s problem. Not mine. My duty as the Slayer has eaten about every damn thing I care about. It’s not getting this. You can’t argue me out or force me out.”  
  
“And how about Dawn?”  
  
Dawn said, “There are factors you don’t know about and can’t change. Sorry, Spike. I’m kind of obligated here.” She stood beside Buffy.  
  
Spike moved a few paces aside, looking around and trying to think it all through. If he could protect neither of them, if they didn’t want, wouldn’t accept that from him, what was the point of anything he was doing? Where was the sense in even trying?  
  
For an instant, he was angry. But the next instant, he let that go and was only desolate and resigned. He said to them quietly, “Maybe I been mistaken then. What is it, that you want me to do?”  
  
**********  
  
He wasn’t getting it: Buffy could tell. Either she’d said it wrong, or he’d heard it wrong. Maybe it was some other damn vamp thing she didn’t know about and how could she, as though she was dating some freaking Elbonian exchange student with all these cockamamie rules you kept blundering into, worse than wicca-pagan Jewish lesbian geek Warren-killer Willow you had to tiptoe around, there were so many things they were touchy about.  
  
He had his eyes back--steel blue, lifelessly downcast; and his eyes (and his shoulders and his voice and the way he was standing and all of it) told her this was more than hurt pride. This was _get-away-from-me-evil-soulless-thing_ wounded. This maybe was even _bathroom-I-could-never-trust-you_ wounded.  
  
Dawn knew it too, exclaiming, “No, no, no!” running to him and grabbing his arm, then swinging both of them to face Buffy, demanding, “Say it a different way. He doesn’t understand.”  
  
When even the official interpreter was stumped, what was scraping-by-C in Spanish 101 supposed to do about it? “What different way?”  
  
“I don’t know, but we’re making it bad and it’s not supposed to be that way. Spike, tell her.”  
  
He shook his head. “Dunno what you want, Bit. All I can see is, whatever it is, it’s not what I been doing. So I dunno anymore what you want.”  
  
That of course was the moment the Potentials came sweeping up, all pleased and full of themselves to have played such a neat trick on him, then standing in awkward poses as even they saw it, that he hadn’t reacted to protection and concern and love dammit the way they’d expected him to, and if nobody else could figure it out either, if it was just him, he was just gonna have to suck it up and deal because nobody had time for his damn moods and cockamamie Victorian vamp sensibilities right now.  
  
Buffy named the mark and sent them all off toward it with a word and a swing of her arm, that little alien routine of his that everybody had down with no misunderstandings, still facing him with one hand on her hip and the other of course occupied with the axe, and asked, “You coming?”  
  
Still sad-eyed, he responded, “Yeah, I guess,” and fell in jogging on her left, exactly where he was supposed to be, dammit, and what was the freaking problem here?  
  
Well, Buffy admitted, she’d known he wasn’t gonna like it, known it was gonna be a standoff. That was why she hadn’t even attempted to argue with him but instead presented him with a done deal too late for anything to be changed. He wasn’t gonna budge, and neither was she. OK, the mission mattered, and OK he was key guy on that because of the amulet. But how could anybody imagine that she was gonna let him try to get in there all alone, back to the place of his insanity and his torture that he still had nightmares about and was so deeply afraid of he could barely talk about it, and not surround him with all the layers of love and support that’d come clamoring to her, demanding to come along?  
  
How could somebody contrive to take that as some sort of mortal insult?  
  
The advance scout, Mike, who now had some connection with the SITs that Buffy didn’t understand either, came put-putting up on Spike’s motorcycle except it seemed to be Mike’s now (don’t ask) and stopped in the middle of the street to report to Amanda. When Amanda went on and all the SITs had passed, Mike swung the bike into a leisurely curb-to-curb Uey and then paced them on Spike’s far side. He was wearing jeans and a loose camouflage jacket over a green Hellmouth souvenir T-shirt.  
  
“Hi,” he said to Spike, smiling pleasantly.  
  
Spike waited a beat to acknowledge him. “Hullo, Michael. What are you doin’ here, then?”  
  
“Point.”  
  
“Ahuh.”  
  
That minimal exchange was followed by a couple of minutes’ silence, maybe in respect for the cool tough-guy terseness of it all. All uber-cool, Buffy thought: almost like a couple of Initiative lunks with their John Wayne imitations. Then Mike said, “I got a couple of cases of incendiaries together, past few weeks. Me and Huey, some others. Kept a few loose, just on principle. The rest, and some other small ordnance, I passed along to Angel. Thought he might see more use for it at his position.”  
  
“That’s very enterprising of you.”  
  
Mike scratched under an eye, still smiling. “He cussed me out. On account of it wasn’t specified in The Plan. Showed him my demon the whole time. He didn’t like that much neither.”  
  
That got a sideways look from Spike, head actually consenting to turn.  
  
After another couple minutes of silence, Mike asked, “Where d’y want me?”  
  
“If ‘Manda says point, I expect that’s where you belong.”  
  
“I kind of took point my own self. Free ranging at the moment. Independent unit. Open for assignment.”  
  
“Don’t ask me, I’m not running this operation.”  
  
Cutting in on whatever Mike had started to say, Buffy said, “Run it.”  
  
No look, no immediate question or comment. Maybe a dozen strides in silence. Then Spike acknowledged, “Slayer,” in his most ironic, irritating drawl, halted Mike with a gesture, and mounted pillion. They roared off.  
  
Buffy wasn’t sure that setting Spike in charge was the right thing to do. But she figured snark was preferable to sullen. Pair him up with another vamp, who might actually know what his problem was or pry it out of him and maybe make him deal with it. At least they knew the same hand signals. She’d let the spot to her left go empty for that.  
  
**********  
  
With minimal direction, Mike pulled up by some parked cars in view of the sewer lid covering the most direct below-ground route into the school. Dismounting, Spike scanned the area, taking care to avoid the stretches illuminated by the streetlights.  
  
Spotting a sentry, a Bringer, off in an alley, he sent Mike to halt everybody at a new mark a block away and signal when they were in place.  
  
Except that it wasn’t by mechanical means, nobody had yet figured how Bringers communicated. Spike wanted to give the sentry no chance to relay an alarm or be missed, either one.  
  
He mapped out a route starting with a fire escape and over successive rooftops that would put him overlooking that alley. Using utter stillness and bursts of vampire speed, he crossed the street zig-zag: no direct lines, no sustained motion to draw the eye. He waited under the fire escape, laying the sword aside as unwieldy, until he caught a high-pitched whistle just off from a nighthawk’s shrill tone. Then he made an angled jump: to one wall high, then rebounding to the fire escape above where the last ladder would have creaked going down. Onto the first roof and then the way he’d mapped in his head, short jumps and soft, collected landings that made no sound.  
  
It was well he’d taken care because there were two sentries. Not an unreasonable distance apart, if he dropped right. He took a taser in his right hand and his favorite hand axe in his left. Then he dropped, extending both arms in the instant of landing. Axe had to be more discriminating, so he made sure the angle and backhand force would take the one Bringer’s throat out, reaching more heedlessly with the taser because any contact would be good enough, any hit disabling. The second Bringer was dead too before it’d finished falling.  
  
The spilled blood stank: though they started as human, whatever changed them to Bringers rendered their blood inedible and repulsive.  
  
Spike showed himself at the mouth of the alley and pointed. Everybody started coming from the mark in small fast groups, to not make a congested bunch waiting by the sewer cover Mike was lifting. Spike backtracked to retrieve the sword and found a rag in a dumpster to clean the axe before suspending it from a belt loop. Didn’t need the stink of Bringer blood announcing him, just at the first, anyway. Later, it wouldnt matter.  
  
Slayer and most of the SITs were down. Mike held Dawn’s arm in a wrist clasp to lower her, and Spike laid the sword aside to do the same for Anya. He hadn’t the least clue why they were there but accepted that they were, since Buffy had made no objection and brought them along. Not up to him. Not as if he’d made the Plan, now was it?  
  
All quiet below, so far. Spike named Mike rearguard and assigned him responsibility for Anya and Dawn. “Since you’ve gone free agent here, you’re not under my word. But I don’t want to have to keep track of you and I don’t want to set you to do something and then find you left it.”  
  
Mike nodded, responding, “Understandable.”  
  
“You don’t go off on your own without you let me know, is all.”  
  
“I can follow--” Mike broke off, head lifting, flashing to game face.  
  
Spike knew why because he’d done the same. Hellmouth, that was before them: vast and pervasive as wind. Not needing to pull because it was strong enough, just being. The new awareness was like tornado sirens in Kansas. Loud. Hot. An assault on the senses, reverberating in the bones. Full of excitement and promise.  
  
Spike grabbed Mike’s arm as the younger vampire started moving. Mike took a stance and started breathing, open-mouthed, scowling heavily at his boots.  
  
Spike told him, “You drop game face, it might be easier.” He waited another minute. “You drop game face or you go your ways. Can’t be around the children like that.”  
  
“You first,” Mike growled.  
  
Spike did, although that made it harder to hold his concentration and his balance. Lad needed the example. After a moment, Mike’s features smoothed, too. He said, “Set me at point. Can’t answer otherwise. Do less damage in front if I can’t hold.”  
  
“All right. Only be a while. Enough fighting for everybody, soon enough.” Enough to keep the demon, increasingly angry and impatient from being denied, occupied and happy.  
  
Between them, he and Mike got the sewer cover back into place from below. Then they edged among the SITs, moving through the column. Spike knew their scents and their voices, so even had there been no light at all, he would have known them all perfectly clearly. As it was, there was enough light for him to distinguish outlines. But it occurred to him that they had none of these familiar markers but voices maybe and he didn’t think any of them had ever been through the tunnels before. He paused in the midst of them and said quietly, “Here,” so they knew him and gathered close around.  
  
He said, “There’ll be light soon. Torches on the walls. If anybody’s fetched a flashlight, don’t use it. Dark don’t bother Bringers, and showing a light will mark you and spoil your dark-sight for no gain. Slayer’s put you back in my hand, dunno why, but that means you keep an ear to her but I call the mark, all right?”  
  
Amanda said flatly, “Good.”  
  
“Sue, you sing out,” Spike directed. “Soft.”  
  
“Here,” called Suzanne, from the back rank.  
  
“Sue, you team with two or three others, don’t leave anybody short, and take rearguard. Mind Bit and Anya, all right? Sing out loud if anything comes at you from the back. ‘Manda, you keep an ear that way and turn and take it with your team if we get trouble from behind. Kim, if ‘Manda has to turn, you take point. Everybody clear?”  
  
They all murmured _Clear, Spike._.  
  
Spike added, “Willow’s running the Stone now. Any vamp you come across is gonna be sore distracted. Biters too, though I hope we won’t meet many if we just wait here a bit. See any, go right at ‘em. ‘S’not a good fighting space for them. Too constricted. And be mindful of Mike, he’s a bit off. He’ll do as best he can, but keep out of striking distance. Gonna keep him with me at point. Don’t dust him except he makes you. Or me, for that matter.”  
  
Soft chuckles with an edge of nervousness but nothing severe.  
  
“Anybody who wanders off is goat for a week and will get a real spectacular penalty. Or we’ll have her bones for soup. When time comes to move, hold hands like elephants and go slow. Want to let things clear out, up ahead.”  
  
They sounded and smelled more settled, so he continued on through them to where Mike and Buffy waited at the head of the column.  
  
Spike sent Mike on ahead to locate the next cross-tunnel junction. They’d have to be past that before open fighting began or opposition could come at them from the sides, cut them off. As soon as Mike was gone, Spike relaxed back into game face because that made it easier to hold focus. Not try to hold against the pull of the Chaos Stone, just let it drag a little and let go, like standing hip-high in strong surf. Breathe and release. Stay steady within the larger motions. He rubbed a hand across his eyes.  
  
“Is it bothering you yet?” Buffy asked.  
  
He laughed shortly because she could have any of about fifty things in mind and still be right. “Mark how we go, pet. You’ll have to come back this way. Pipe along here is pretty solid. I hope it’ll hold--long enough for your lot to get clear, anyway.” He set both wrists on her shoulders. “When it starts, don’t you hang about. Dunno what it’s apt to be, but I don’t figure it’ll be anything your being there is gonna change or stop. I want you gone.”  
  
Head lift, likely a major glare. “We are not still having this discussion!”  
  
“Well, yes, we are. I have to be there, see it out. You don’t.” He began rubbing a thumb along the edge of her jaw. She was so fierce and smelled so fine, exactly like herself as though no clothes were between them: demon was becoming real interested. Wanting to find some way to explode--fight or fuck, no particular preference. Strongly aware of her, Spike went on quietly, “Maybe you think because there were no good ways I could stop you coming, there’s not ways I could make you go. You’re wrong. Truly don’t want to fight you over this, love. But I will if you make me.”  
  
“You and what army?”  
  
“I always been all the army I needed until I started messing into apocalypses, missions, world-ending tripe. You want to do dumb stuff, then I’m gonna have to go back to doin’ dumb stuff, too. Wouldn’t like that to be the last of us, doin’ like that again.”  
  
She lifted up and kissed him hard on the mouth, game face and all. Surely felt the difference but only pushed herself tighter, closer. He could feel his mark on her very plain, very strong. She said, “This isn’t gonna be the last of us. I won’t let it.”  
  
“Pet, your hope could be the ruin of it all and us besides. Please. Put it away.”  
  
“Never gonna happen. I’ve just gotten you trained exactly the way I want you and I’m not gonna let all that work be for nothing.”  
  
Spike couldn’t help laughing. Still rubbing at the soft place under her jaw, he returned her kiss and then bent his forehead against hers. “If all this has been training, we both made a right mess of it because neither one of us will mind worth a damn. All right, you do how you do and we’ll see what comes of it. Not gonna argue with you no more.”  
  
Returning then, Mike reported everything clear to the next junction. Everybody moved, gathering past that. Up ahead, some way off, the smooth curve of the sewer pipe became rough rock walls. The first pair of wall torches were visible. Even from that distance, it was enough light for vampire sight: catching Spike in game face, Mike growled and shifted too. It wasn’t worth discussing because those two tiny points of light were cut off by the crouched, stalking form of a Turok-han ducking low under the top of the passage. The rustling footfalls and motion behind it were dark-robed Bringers: enough to fill the tunnel from side to side.  
  
“Finally!” said Mike, lunging ahead, and it was begun.  
  
**********  
  
Crouched with Anya against the tunnel wall, watching Spike’s black silhouette carving up Bringers in shadowplay mayhem too far away for it to be gross, Dawn asked, “Are you really positively sure we shouldn’t tell him?”  
  
“Absolutely really positively sure,” Anya confirmed, which sounded pretty decisive. “Tell somebody as inherently reckless as a vampire that he’s been granted invulnerability, much less invulnerability with a time limit, and the first thing he’ll do is forget the time limit. Therefore the second thing he’ll do is something totally reckless and stupid beyond the limit and get himself dusted. You _never_ tell someone a thing like that. It’s certain doom. And defeats the whole purpose of the thing.”  
  
“Anya…is there anything you’re not telling _me?”_  
  
“Of course not. I had just the one marker to call in, and you heard all of that. They didn’t even have the manners to let me finish my sentence.”  
  
“Yeah. I was afraid of that. Why couldn’t you have wished the invulnerability spread a little wider?”  
  
“Self-serving wishes are seldom granted and always backfire even when they are. And look how vindictive and petty the Powers were even as it was. There’s such a thing as pushing your luck right off a cliff.”  
  
“Oh! It’s not working! Look, it’s not--”  
  
“He just got knocked down. Or tripped. Don’t be ridiculous. Invulnerability doesn’t protect against that. See?” Anya waved and pointed simultaneously. “He’s up again.”  
  
Dawn worried, “Maybe we’re not in far enough. How far in is _in?_ Do we have to be where he is, right there, for it to work right? Oh--they’re moving!”  
  
That meant they had to move too, harried forward by Sue and her team, following the rest of the SITs toward the dim light ahead. Pretty soon they had to step over dozens of dead Bringers or at least Dawn sincerely hoped they were dead and jumped fast to each new place she could set a foot, like a macabre game of hop-scotch, because she was convinced one of the robed corpses was gonna suddenly roll and _grab._ Once she misjudged the jump and stepped on a hand, freaking herself into a swallowed screech.  
  
When they reached clear running space lit on both sides by a succession of torches, Dawn was in no further doubt: they were _in_ it now for sure.  
  
**********  
  
Spike tried to concentrate on the fight to block out _where_ he was fighting. Tried to face blank walls because every time he caught sight of the seal, there was sideslip. Every time he saw either the wall where he’d been secured or faced the direction that’d been all he could see for that long, terrible time of confusion, his certainty of _now_ became more difficult to maintain.  
  
The Plan was working: most of the Turok-han had been drawn away by the pull of the Chaos Stone, leaving only Bringers to defend this threshold, and the children had already reduced the number of defenders by nearly half, although more were still coming, summoned by the unseen First, which could act only indirectly, through its agents. Spike had Willow’s charm: nothing could get into his head, tell him lies of illusion. He, Mike, and Buffy had effectively split the cavern among them, disrupting and dividing the massed front of the defenders so the teams of SITs couldn’t be overwhelmed and had time to take on two or three Bringers at a time, drop them with tasers and finish them, then regroup to engage the next few.  
  
Then a Bringer lunged in behind the swing of Spike’s broadsword and rammed a knife into his ribs. Or tried to. The knife skidded off without penetrating. The Bringer stumbled into Spike’s side. Reflex made Spike slam the pommel of the sword into the Bringer’s head, but certainty had collapsed.  
  
As Spike slowly looked around, the sword tilted down of its own weight until the point rested on the floor. Everywhere, the battle continued. He was bumped and jostled by Bringers closing in around him. But none of their blows truly touched him. Everything slid aside. It wasn’t real. Just another in a series of hallucinated battles, rescues, escapes to get his hopes up only to fade and leave him fastened to the same wall trying to believe there was any hope at all.  
  
So it wasn’t true, then: he’d never escaped this place. Buffy hadn’t come for him. Only something put into his mind. The defensive charm was only false comfort to make him rely upon it, feel secure until it was ripped away. Nothing was to be believed.  
  
His hand opened. The broadsword clattered onto the floor. Refusing the other lie, he broke the cord and pitched the charm away from him.  
  
Buffy stood before him, her eyes contemptuous. “As if you could accomplish anything. As if a pitiful corrupted wreck like you could have any power. As if anybody would trust you with any. You’d only spoil it, ruin it, keep it from the one person who actually could have done something with it.” Buffy was gone. Angel stood there, hand commandingly extended. “Give it to me, boy. You’ve bollixed the Plan but there still may be time to salvage something from this fiasco. Hand it over. Now!”  
  
Shudders ran through him. He had no thought of disobeying. His hand went to the chain of the amulet and he was lifting it over his head when something slammed into him and knocked him off his feet because he wasn’t maintaining a proper stance, had only been standing, hopeless and confused.  
  
“Spike, it’s not before, it’s now!” It was Dawn who’d knocked him down and was flailing at him, slapping and pounding. “You have to believe me! I never lie to you. Look at your arm, Spike! Look at it! Oh!”  
  
As a Bringer’s knife stabbed into Dawn’s shoulder, Spike saw the tattoo spiraled around his left arm and remembered how and why it had been set there--real beyond any doubting and no part of this place. From after. Everything rearranged and came back into clear focus. Angel’s voice continued to rant but Angel’s smell was absent and there was no sense of his presence. Only a mask, a deception. Taking no more heed of the phantom, Spike twisted to shelter Dawn behind and beneath him and struck at the crowd of Bringers, calling, _”Here!”_ The Bringers’ blades had no effect and Spike didn’t understand but he fought them anyway, taking a stance over Dawn and knocking attackers away and into each other, his swinging fists and his arms weapons enough to hold them back until SITs came and surrounded him, clearing an expanding circle with deadly efficiency.  
  
Game-faced Mike barged through, drawn by the bloodsmell, leaning toward sobbing Dawn. Spike got the taser out of his pocket and hit Mike in the shoulder, dropping him. Then Spike felt the amulet’s humming vibration strengthen suddenly against and within his chest.  
  
Day had come.  
  
Spike whirled, looking for Buffy. She was engaged with a crowd of Bringers. Spike sent the SITs that way with a wave, following as the Bringers retreated and were pushed back, and Buffy had to let the bloody axe head drop to avoid hitting the SITs. She turned and saw Spike coming. Their eyes met for an instant before he lunged and hit her in the back with a taser charge. Her mouth opened in a silent cry of protest as she collapsed.  
  
The SITs were all gaping at him. He directed, “Take the Slayer and Dawn. Mark is the street, and then the van. Get as far away as you can. _Go!”_  
  
Turning, Spike found Anya refusing to let the SITs collect Dawn.  
  
“Spike, no!” Anya shouted. “We have to stay. And don’t even think of it!” She glared at the taser in his hand. “Go, go!” She waved the SITs off with flapping arms.  
  
The SITs looked to Spike, then whirled and ran when he sent them off with a tilt of his head. No time to dispute such things. It would all go as it had to.  
  
He was finding it hard to move. Everything seemed to have become heavier, denser. Pressure pushed in from all sides and somehow he was stretching, expanding, to meet it. The remaining Bringers were advancing. Spike slowly bent to pick up the sword and flung it high. The point impaled the ceiling. A single stone was dislodged and fell. Then the sword itself, clanging onto the rock. Pencil-thin, a sunbeam slanted down, a bright golden cord striking the wall near the rings he’d been fastened to for so long.  
  
Anya helped Dawn stumble toward the point where the light fell. Following, Spike took Michael up and carried him, laboring against the forces that tried to hold him in place. The First flickered before him in successive shapes, shouting, howling, and yammering. Spike took no notice and laid Mike down against the wall. He didn’t know if that would be enough, but it was all he could do. He straightened and moved to put Dawn and Anya behind him. Then he turned, assumed a steady stance, and gave himself over to the light.  
  
The bright rod of sunlight met the amulet. From the amulet an answering ray shot upward, in parallel, widening the chink in the ceiling. The down-slanting beam grew broader and so did the beam that returned, shuttling back and forth in thousandths of a second, expanding until the ceiling began to fall. The whole cavern was illuminated then. It began to topple and collapse, taking the Bringers with it.  
  
Channeling the immense light, Spike was locked in place, perfectly balanced within it. He let none through to those he sheltered. No heat or harm touched them because he was between and that was exactly right. He felt that. He knew that. It made him glad.  
  
And still the light grew. Everything was white, was golden. Cascades and spinning fireballs bouncing, rolling, exploding into sparkling destruction, chaotic and splendid. Spike started laughing. He could no longer feel his body at all. Only the flow of the light defined him and the light was his joy.  
  
He directed the core of the light against the Seal of Danzalthar that his blood had been used to magically activate as an interdimensional portal, a stable gateway. Soon it began to bubble and sublime into the air. Its triangular plates twisted and withered like leaves. When the seal was gone, it was as though it’d been a plug in a drain. Everything started spilling into the widening crater. Masonry, whole walls toppled from above and were gone. The high school was collapsing, eaten away from below. Everything that fell vanished because the Hellmouth itself remained--immaterial, intangible, incoherent chaos within and without. Swallowing everything, even light, and spewing it back as random energy. A spiral, a whirlpool, a cyclone developed. For an instant the flows inward and outward exactly matched. The Hellmouth winked out and the flow of the light faded into daylight, general and unfocused, obscured by rising clouds of dust.  
  
**********  
  
By the time the SITs rendezvoused with the SUV, somewhat haphazardly driven by Sue, Buffy could talk and she did. At length. Scathingly. She was chiefly furious at (and afraid for) Spike, but her ire extended to the SITs for dragging her out in the middle of a fight like a sack of potatoes.  
  
Helping load Buffy into the back seat, Amanda said, “Be reasonable, Buffy: once Spike tasered you, what were we supposed to do? Leave you there? Try to form up and defend you while who knows what shit erupted around us?”  
  
Kim chimed in, “That place was going up, that was the whole idea, right? We were escort, not attack force. The whole idea was get in, clear the place as much as possible, then get the hell out. Which we did.”  
  
“Oh, God, look!” exclaimed Sue, and everybody did except Buffy, who couldn’t straighten up to see past Sue, Rona, and Chloe, packed into the front seat.  
  
“Don’t look,” yelled Kim. “Cover your eyes!”  
  
A giant flash camera went off just beyond the windshield and continued to burn there, red against Buffy’s eyelids. No heat. No concussion. Just searing, blinding light. Then an abrupt deep _thud_ and the distant creak of tearing metal. More impacts, heard more than felt, and the glare cut off.  
  
As the SITs sorted themselves out, four couldn’t see, including the driver, resulting in a Mexican fire drill of people piling out of the front and others sliding in. The SITs who couldn’t see were shoved in next to Buffy on either side, and the remainder clambered into the back.  
  
Without consultation Kim, the current driver, headed back toward the street where they’d entered the tunnels. It was now full of spouting water mains, and large stretches of the pavement had begun to sag and buckle. A gas line had likely ruptured: nearly the whole block was afire. The water was several inches deep…and running into the storm drains. Into the sewer. No use trying that way.  
  
Kim slammed the SUV into reverse, backing to turn. Except for Kim, everybody was pressed against the passenger side windows. Several blocks away, the high school was hidden within an immense rising dust cloud, golden-white in the early light.  
  
Blinking, trying to clear away black after-images left over from the flash, Buffy asked, “Dawn?”  
  
“With Spike,” responded blind Sue, beside her, calmly. “And Anya. They wouldn’t come. And Mike. Dawn got hurt--bleeding. Spike had to take Mike down.”  
  
Kim shouted, “By the hardware store, right?”  
  
Several SITs yelled back confirmation. Buffy said, “What?”  
  
“Nearest sewer entrance between the school and the bank,” Amanda said. “Where we were supposed to be, except we detoured. Any Turok-han will use that line, trying to retreat to the Hellmouth, now that it’s day. We were supposed to be in front of them. Now we’ll be behind them. If the passage is clear. If.”  
  
It wasn’t that Buffy hadn’t heard the Plan. She’d simply paid no attention, knowing quite clearly that she was going with Spike. And then he’d tasered her. If he wasn’t dead, or _more_ dead, she was gonna murder him. But it wasn’t possible he could be dead. And if he wasn’t, Dawn was all right too, even though apparently wounded. It was beyond question that Spike would prevent any harm coming to Dawn. Or to Buffy, even if he had to hit her with a taser charge to do it, the bastard. So there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Buffy concentrated on regaining control of her body in the cramped space so that when Kim’s maniac driving brought them to the spot, Buffy wouldn’t jump out and fall on her face.  
  
When the SUV screeched to a halt partway up the sidewalk, Buffy was able to climb over the SITs and step down with decent coordination. “Who has a spare weapon?” She didn’t care whether her battle axe had been retrieved: it wasn’t a good weapon for fighting in a confined space anyway.  
  
Amanda passed out a heavy two-handed blade. “Take mine, it’s one of the good ones.”  
  
“Yeah.” Buffy took the pommel with the sense of shaking hands with an old, trusted friend. She’d done a whole lot of patrolling with this sword.  
  
In the middle of the street, Kim and Rona were kneeling by the uncovered sewer opening. Rona had head and shoulders into the hole. “No water yet. Lots of dust.” Gripping the opposite edge, she jackknifed her legs inside and was gone. Less acrobatically, Kim disappeared a minute later. Buffy named Meagan to stand watch on the SUV and its blinded occupants, then stepped off into the hole.  
  
The half dozen SITs who’d preceded her were already out of sight, running noisily and in full cry. To draw any opposition back toward themselves, away from the school. If they succeeded in attracting any, they’d be in trouble. Buffy took off after them full speed. The rest of the SITs followed.  
  
Buffy found the vanguard engaged with a greater number of Turok-han, but the SITs had the advantage. The Biters were impeded by their own numbers--only three at a time could turn and fight, and they had to stoop low, too tall for the space. But one Biter had gotten its claws on Kim and was lifting her bodily toward its jaws when hit with at least four taser charges, including Kim’s. Buffy jumped up on the narrow walkway at the side of the pipe. That gave her enough height to swing the sword into a Biter’s neck without endangering the SITs. As that Biter dusted, Buffy did a quick shuffle step forward in the backswing and hacked into the next, methodically cutting them down as the SITs, below, pushed forward with blades and tasers.  
  
As the rest of the SITs arrived, they slammed right up the middle, not stopping to engage, striking only to keep from getting grabbed or delayed. Much of the yelling had died down, so the distant but unmistakable sound of Spike’s voice shouting, _”Here!”_ came clear. Grinning and hooting, everybody laid into the retreating crowd of Biters with even greater ferocity.  
  
The farther the SITs went, the more problem the dust--of various sorts--became. Many had to back off and rip clothing for makeshift masks and still were wheezing, sneezing, and choking. Buffy’s eyes stung, but as long as she could find a target, she kept swinging. A Biter lacking an arm or sliced across the torso was still fighting, but a second swing was usually enough to dust it.  
  
There came to be five layers of fighting. Buffy and what had become the rearguard had perhaps twenty Turok-han between them and the main body of SITs, who in turn were engaged not only with the Biters behind them but another pack ahead that were fighting some group yet farther on. It was the SITs in the middle who were in the most trouble, bottled up between the two groups of Turok-han. And alarmed calls said that the tasers were beginning to fail.  
  
Even with a good blade, none of the SITs had the strength to behead a Turok-han; and nothing short of that was much more than an annoyance. Buffy concentrated on beheading, letting the SITs do what they could to engage and wound. Frequently, as a Biter dusted, the arc of Buffy’s blade carried it into the concrete sides of the sewer pipe. The sword rang and shivered but didn’t shatter. Buffy’s shoulders and arms were tiring with the shock of the rebounds.  
  
Several SITs were wounded and down, but the bottled SITs had apparently been freed enough for some of them to turn back and concentrate on the Biters between them and Buffy’s contingent. There were a dozen. Then eight. Then none, and the whole group swept forward. And found themselves confronting, through the dust haze, a wall of stunned Biters--a wall over which Anya was precariously clambering with great haste. Following Anya, maybe pursuing her, were eight vamps in game face who halted, warily balancing--five male, three female--when they caught sight of the SITs. As one of the males shed game face, Buffy recognized him as one of Spike’s minions, and went forward to help Anya down and wave the vamps forward. As they descended, Mike appeared, carrying a kicking, protesting Dawn. And last of all Spike, grinning, looking for Buffy. When his eyes found her, he held up a length of piano wire by its one remaining wooden handle. His right hand had a belt wrapped around it and dripped blood. “A bit short of weapons, this side,” he commented, dropping in a series of two-footed jumps. “Could stop ‘em but not dust ‘em.” He hit the floor near where the other vamps had gathered--to Buffy’s right, away from the SITs--and was starting to say something else when Buffy belted him, knocking him back against the high mound of immobilized Turok-han, some of which had begun to stir. As he hit, a ropy grey arm closed around his chest. Buffy picked up the sword and swung, striking the arm. Then she sprang two long paces up the pile, grabbed Spike’s ankle, and yanked.  
  
Depositing Dawn to stand on the floor, Mike remarked to the other vamps, “No problem, that’s just how they do. Should get clear now…Kim. Where’s ‘Manda?”  
  
“Some eye problems,” Kim responded. “After the flash.” She considered Mike dubiously. “You OK now?”  
  
“Pretty OK. Soon as that damn stone let up, had a bit better hold of myself. Clear away now, like I said.” Mike waved, and Buffy conveyed her agreement by dragging Spike backward by the collar, so all the SITs backed off too.  
  
Shaking his head, Spike complained, “Fucking hell, Slayer!” so Buffy dumped him. Sitting, he began unwrapping the belt from his bleeding hand. Chloe came with the shoulder-case of first-aid supplies and handed him a wad of gauze, kneeling down, willing to apply it, but Spike waved her off, asking, “So is that the end of the dumb stuff, Slayer, or d’you want to have another go-round when I’m lookin’ for it?”  
  
“Till the next time,” Buffy began, taking the gauze and unfolding it to find an end.  
  
Motion caught her eye. The vamps hadn’t retreated with the rest of them. They were standing in a double row maybe twenty feet from the mound of Turok-han. Together they pitched something at the pile, turned, and dove. The mound exploded into flame that licked back along the ceiling in an incandescent wave. Spike ducked and Buffy threw herself on top of him. One of the vamps was burning, too…and then just gone. As was the pile of Turok-han. Nothing left but greasy, foul smoke that had everybody coughing and rubbing at their eyes again.  
  
Pushing Buffy off as the SITs began retreating, collecting and helping the wounded, Spike stood up and said to Mike, still in tuck-and-cover position, “Oh, that was a fine idea,” in a scathing tone.  
  
Mike cautiously uncovered. “Well, couldn’t before on account of the children.”  
  
“What, no napalm? No flame-throwers?”  
  
Another vamp, Spike’s glum-faced minion, was getting up, and the rest of the vamps around him. He said, “We gave them over to the folk in the bank. Flame-throwers, not napalm. Didn’t have any of that. Figured flame-throwers wouldn’t be too great at close quarters. For us, anyway.”  
  
“Grenades were nice, though,” commented Mike, brushing at his knees as he rose. “Been savin’ them up quite a while now. Make a fine show, don’t they.”  
  
“Yeah, if you don’t fry your own fucking stupid head off. Terrible bunch of nitwits, you lot. Huey.”  
  
The minion advanced, and he and Spike shook hands. Spike’s hand made a bloody print, and Huey considered it, looking amused, then smiled and started licking it off. Spike aimed a cuff at his head that didn’t quite land as the vamp walked away down the sewer line. The SITs moved aside to let him pass.  
  
“Grace,” said Spike, and offered his hand to one of the female vampires. She didn’t bother with a handshake, just bent enough to lick it and straightened, grinning, amber-eyed. As she followed Huey, Spike named the other vampires: “Mary. Isadora. Benny. Alfredo. Paul.” The males took a bloody handshake. The women smiled broadly and had a taste.  
  
Some damn vamp thing, Buffy figured. She didn’t like it at all, female vamps licking him, but went to help Chloe bandage Dawn’s shoulder. Buffy looked up, noticing Mike’s name hadn’t been called. Spike was reaching toward the walkway, at least five feet away, and beginning to waver. Buffy and Mike reached him about together. Mike stood clear so Buffy could back and partly lift Spike to a seat on the walkway. Spike bent his head, eyes vague and dull. His hand was still bleeding.  
  
“’M fine. Just come over dizzy there for a second. Be fine.”  
  
Mike went and got more gauze. He offered it to Buffy, but she waved him to go ahead, sliding to a seat next to Spike. She hugged Spike lightly and pulled him to rest against her.  
  
Wrapping Spike’s hand, Mike commented, “Strangest thing. When the garrote handle broke, at first the wire didn’t cut him. So he kept on. After awhile, though, it did. Kept on anyway.”  
  
Her arm in a sling, Dawn came over and put a hand on Spike’s knee. “Spike. I could--”  
  
“No, Bit. No more of that. I’ll be fine. Don’t trouble yourself.”  
  
Dawn lifted the medallion, the amulet. Buffy hadn’t paid it any attention before. She now saw that the central jewel was fractured and blackened. Glancing up at Buffy, Dawn remarked, “He was all burning. All flame. All bright. You should have seen him, Buffy. It was really something.”  
  
Buffy reached and smoothed Dawn’s hair. “But you were hurt.”  
  
“No, not really. He stayed between and kept it from us. I can’t see auras the way Willow can. But I saw it then. Like an Elf-Lord revealed in his wraith--his astral body. Almost too bright to look at.”  
  
“Oh, please,” Spike said. “No fucking Tolkien, Bit.”  
  
“Well, it was. You don’t see you. I do. I did.”  
  
As Mike finished tying the bandage and stepped away, Spike protested to Dawn, “And what the goddam fucking hell were you doin’ there to begin with? You and Anya? Makes no sense.”  
  
Dawn made a judicious face. “Makes very good sense. Lady Gates required it. We had to be witnesses. So She would know precisely how it all happened. For it all to come out right. Spike, I really wish--”  
  
“No, Bit. Just a little tired, is all. An’ then of course your sis had to haul off and pop me one.”  
  
“You had it coming!” Buffy declared.  
  
“Gave you fair warning, didn’t I? Would’a done Bit the same, if there’d been time. You’re not due any apologies from yours truly, Slayer. Not for that. If you can’t keep your priorities straight, I’m gonna do it for you. And next time, the same as now. I’m gonna do what I do, and that’s keep my girls from harm. Whatever way I can. Whatever is necessary. And if you slugging me afterwards is the price of that, then that’s the price. Anyway, I didn’t think…. Figured to get out of paying it.”  
  
“I know you did,” Buffy said. “And that’s still not acceptable.”  
  
“Well, it’s not happening now, so it’d be real dumb to keep arguing about it, now wouldn’t it?” Spike retorted, pushing to his feet. “Argue it some other time if you want to. But I’m done.”  
  
Yes, Buffy reflected, he was done, all right. In all senses. Still not steady on his feet, shoulders shoved forward and head still bent with the effort of moving.  
  
“I would,” said Mike, falling in beside them. “Only you say it’s no help. No good.”  
  
Belatedly, for Buffy, the penny finally dropped. She understood what Dawn had been offering, and Spike refusing. What Mike was willing about, even though it didn’t work that way. What Spike would never ask for or suggest except in one special context.  
  
“Dawn, you and Mike go on ahead. Tell everybody, get home. I need to have some words with my vampire here.”  
  
Buffy watched them out of sight, then turned to Spike, who’d settled exhaustedly back against the walkway. Evidently, impersonating an Elf-Lord, closing the Hellmouth, and keeping three people besides yourself from going extra-crispy in a flashfire inferno bright enough to damage the vision of those watching from four blocks away really took it out of a guy. And then fighting Turok-han and blood loss on top of that.  
  
“What is it now, pet?” His tone expected more arguments and was resigned to them.  
  
Buffy stroked his face and kissed him. “Now comes the good part. Where you’re a vamp and I’m the Slayer and we keep each other going. Where you damn near die and don’t let me come with you, so you come to me now and let me make it up to you. And you don’t say no. You don’t say anything. You change for me because I ask you to. And then we do what we do.” She drew him close and kissed him again, holding him until she felt the change come upon him. Then she laid her head on his shoulder.  
  
“Ah, love--”  
  
Pressure, no pain. Then the intense connection, orgasmic but not sexual now. Warm and loving, with a large tenderness. An intimate embrace of complimentary needs gently filled. Communion. And then, after only a minute or two, his soft mouth on her, on the tingling mark, slowly licking it shut. Nuzzling softly against her neck.  
  
They were quiet and breathed together a little while.  
  
Eventually he murmured, “Not how it was, that I dreamed…. Doesn’t have to be so. Can do without. Don’t want to, though. Yours regardless.”  
  
“Yours regardless too. Come on: Xander has his truck. That dust was pretty heavy. Maybe the sunlight….”  
  
**********  
  
Of course nothing would do for it, per Angel, but to have a big follow-up meeting, post-mortem, debriefing, some dumb fucking thing, where everybody could match their performance against parameters and explain why what’d worked was different from the Plan and therefore was probably a mistake anyway and goddam apologize for it in words of more than one syllable.  
  
Why a bunch of cousins, drawn (per Plan) to the Stone, had split off on their own hook and instead of doing Biters in the street by the bank, had chosen to lob incendiary grenades at Biters in the sewer tunnels by the Hellmouth, which hadn’t at all been allowed for except by Mike, of course, who hadn’t bothered to tell anybody except maybe some SITs, who didn’t sit in on Scooby Council meetings and so everybody had to sit around and wait till the right SITs were fetched to chip in their tuppence worth of utter codswallop.  
  
Spike, sitting on the floor with his back against the couch, at Buffy’s feet, inquired, “So we’re playing Clue here, are we?” but was taken no notice of and contented himself with having another drink, continuing his own private unauthorized victory celebration and toasting the bewildering, astonishing miracle of not being dead about which he had his own suspicions except Bit and Anya were being all smug, mysterious, and silent and hitting them until they admitted it just didn’t seem an option somehow.  
  
So instead, when the SITs were dragged in, everybody droned on about why nobody had considered eye protection and when the affected SITs were expected to recover. And on to the fascinating topic of why Buffy and the SITs had utterly ignored the Plan by providing escort service for a subordinate vampire and two fucking noncombatants with no business whatsoever on the sodding grid, right into the Hellmouth itself, leaving their assigned position uncovered. Said noncombatants continuing all smug, mysterious, and silent about it all, of course, and no budging them on it.  
  
For a wonder, Buffy kept mum about being tasered and forcibly removed from the fucking goddam grid because Angel would have had an absolute cow and that was altogether too sickening to contemplate.  
  
Angel was having enough of a cow glaring at the nice fresh bright mark set just above Buffy’s collarbone, that Buffy had left all naked and uncovered and proud but they didn’t talk about such things in front of the others, oh no, it was just there and not a thing Angel could do about it, the wanker. Couldn’t make Spike stop petting Buffy’s ankle, either, except to keep yelling at Spike to quit “fidgeting,” and that wasn’t specific enough to quite make Spike mind, or keep minding, now was it?  
  
Because it wasn’t fidgeting. It was petting. Like what Buffy’s fingers were doing in his hair and on the back of his neck, that felt all sorts of good, and Angel would turn three colors of red before he was gonna comment on that or try to make her stop, like to see him try, the bloody ponce. And she smelled all excellent too and none of it for Angel, and as soon as this bloody fucking irredeemably stupid meeting was through Spike was gonna give her such a seeing-to that neither of them would be fit to move for a week nor want to, neither.  
  
And now Anya was nattering on about having incurred several expenses in furtherance of the Plan, namely losing a great bloody expensive crystal and no point billing Dawn for it since Dawn had no income, and also namely and to wit, the cost of the Eye of Ra, no longer in salable condition, he’d purely ruined it (cauterized its image and shadow right into his goddam chest and likely to scar, he thought, rubbing the mark absently, hadn’t even known it was there until he pulled off the intact shirt to shower the dust and the ashes away). The point of all the foregoing being that Anya wanted the Stone (nearly silent in its box at Willow’s feet) as compensation for her losses, it was only fair, and she thought there might be a profit in it considering that the Hellmouth itself, that civic attraction that brought in thousands of tourist dollars per annum, had been shut down and you couldn’t expect that the word of that wouldn’t get around, resulting in a substantial drop-off of trade and who the hell fucking _cared._  
  
It seemed that Angel did. Buffy was willing for demon girl to have the goddam rock, and Willow passed the box over, except that Angel got up and took it because it was his, he’d had his L.A. team research and find it (even though it was no use for getting into bloody Quar’toth, that Peaches _still_ hadn’t admitted to Buffy, having a son with Queen Darla, never would admit what he’d got up to with his sire and you’d think you’d share that kind of news with your goddam fucking soul-mate ex even if she was apt to explode and disarrange your terrible stupid hair when you did).  
  
So Spike uncurled, all sudden, and did the only reasonable thing--hit Angel a good one, grabbed the box, pitched it to the handiest SIT, and ran like hell.  
  
  
  
_**Finis**_

**Author's Note:**

> Continued in _The Blood Is the Life._


End file.
